# What kind of doctor do I need to find (basal cell carcinoma)?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-doctor-do-i-need-to-find-basal-cell-carcinoma/825329>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [November 30, 2018, 9:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-doctor-do-i-need-to-find-basal-cell-carcinoma/825329 "2018-11-30T09:08:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\
**Post date:** [January 9, 2019, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-doctor-do-i-need-to-find-basal-cell-carcinoma/825329/21 "2019-01-09T14:01:03Z")

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Just make sure you get the _right_ kind of [Moe’s surgery](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSimpsons/comments/1jsy17/thats_right_im_a_surgeon/).

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**Author:** ![Turble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8dc957/32.png) [@Turble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Turble)\
**Post date:** [January 9, 2019, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-doctor-do-i-need-to-find-basal-cell-carcinoma/825329/22 "2019-01-09T15:32:45Z")

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Glad to hear you’re getting it handled.

I guess that ‘traveling plastic surgeon’ thing might be at least somewhat common. My dermatologist in Pennsylvania is one in a group of five or six offices scattered around this rural area, each run by a Nurse Practitioner. They handle routine jobs, biopsies, etc., in the office and all refer surgeries to a plastic surgeon who comes in from New Jersey once a month or so to one of the bigger offices that has set up a surgery center.

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**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\
**Post date:** [January 9, 2019, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-doctor-do-i-need-to-find-basal-cell-carcinoma/825329/23 "2019-01-09T16:44:18Z")

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> [@Turble](#):
>
> Glad to hear you’re getting it handled.
> 
> I guess that ‘traveling plastic surgeon’ thing might be at least somewhat common. My dermatologist in Pennsylvania is one in a group of five or six offices scattered around this rural area, each run by a Nurse Practitioner. They handle routine jobs, biopsies, etc., in the office and all refer surgeries to a plastic surgeon who comes in from New Jersey once a month or so to one of the bigger offices that has set up a surgery center.

That’s true for specialists in general. For example, the city where I live doesn’t have enough children with heart disease to support a full-time pediatric cardiologist, but one comes here a couple times a month to see local children, and when I was a kid in the 1970s, my orthodontist went to a town about 30 miles away once or twice a month to see patients there.

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