How to pick a doctor
Have you ever googled your doctor?
That was one of the intriguing questions discussed at a health blogger summit at Consumer Reports' headquarters in Yonkers, N.Y. yesterday during a panel on health ratings --- of physicians, hospitals and drugs. (Check out the twitter feed from the health summit here.)
Certainly if you search the Internet for "doctor ratings" you'll get a number of Web sites that purport to catalog independent reviews of medical professionals. Unfortunately, some of this information is contradictory or may have little impact the kinds of outcomes you could expect as a patient.
But could you, or should you, rely on whatever ratings your Google search pulls up? Probably about as much as you would for any online review, understanding that folks who write such reviews are a self-selecting group that reflect a limited subset of a patient pool. And you have to wonder why people might be motivated to write -- are they fueled by a bad experience?
So, how should you go about looking for a new doc?
There's always recommendations from friends and family, although that only gives you information about a small pool of professionals. The experts on the panel yesterday recommended a couple of other ideas to help sort out the options:
1. Ask a nurse --- as health professionals they will have insight, particularly when it comes to specialists;
2. Call a potential doctor's office and try to get a sense of what the wait times are like, as well as the referral times, just to understand ahead of time what his or her patient load might be.
Here's my two cents: also check for sanctions or complaints with the regulatory body that oversees physicians and medical professions, such as the Maryland Board of Physicians.
Comments
Sometimes googling a doctor will take you to any action taken by a regulatory body. I had a specialist in Connecticut recommend a procedure I wasn't comfortable with, so I put it off. I later googled him, and found out he had some issues with the state regulatory board. I don't remember now what it was, or how bad, but it made me get a second opinion and I was treated by a doctor I felt more comfortable with. Now I always look first.
Posted by: aeb | January 23, 2009 3:41 PM
It seems like while those doctor reviews one gets from searching on Google do not provide enough ratings to make a well informed decision about using a specific doctor, I find that using other information, including the regulatory boards, friends and the reviews on doctor rating sites like Angieslist, MyDocHub.com and RateMds.com, helped me in sorting out the doctor I eventually went to, and I am glad I did.
Jessica, I think you point out a key problem, that there isn't enough info out there to make an educated decision. I wonder if it's our duty as citizens to share our experiences with others to help guide them one way or the other. --- lfk.
Posted by: Jessica | March 31, 2009 2:44 PM