How to find a doctor online

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How to find a doctor online Story Highlights

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/04/17/ep.finding.docs.online/index.html

By Cohen

CNN Medical Correspondent

These days, more people are using electronic word of mouth to find

good doctors.

Traditionally, people have found doctors by word of mouth: Find

someone you trust, and ask whom they use.

These days, many people are using electronic word of mouth.

Put " doctor ratings " into a search engine and you'll come up with a

list of sites where people rate physicians and make comments.

Last month, Angie's List -- the place you go to find a good plumber --

joined the club by starting a doctor section, and even Zagat's, the

folks who rate restaurants, is launching a doctor rating service.

A lot of doctors aren't crazy about these sites and point out that

random, anonymous opinions don't truly measure a physician's quality.

But many consumer health experts say these sites are here to stay,

and can be helpful if used properly. Here are five tips for smart

surfing on physician rating Web sites.

1. Decide what you care about

Are you looking for a long-term medical partner like a pediatrician

or internist, or are you looking for a specialist for a short-term

relationship?

This is important because many of the comments on these sites have to

do with logistics ( " a very dictatorial front office " writes one

reviewer on ratemds.com about a gastroenterologist) or character

( " Dr. X is quite pretentious, " writes another reviewer on the same

site). Nasty secretaries and a haughty doctor can be bad news if this

is someone you'll be seeing often. But if the doctor's going to yank

out your tonsils and you're never going to see her again, do you

really care that she's full of herself and her office staff is mean?

" The 'what' is as important as the 'who,' " says Lansky,

president of the Pacific Business Group on Health. " If I want a heart

surgeon, I'm going to look for different things than if I'm looking

for a primary care doctor. "

2. Look for volume

It's a matter of statistics: The more reviews you read, the more

likely you are to get an accurate assessment. " I would check a lot of

different Web sites, " says Carol Cronin, executive director of the

Informed Patient Institute. " Look across them, not just within one. "

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Speaking of volume, a common concern about doctor rating sites is

that one angry patient can make multiple nasty comments, using a

different name each time (or, conversely, that the physician herself

could go on and make multiple glowing comments).

But Schneider, chairman of the Informed Patient Institute,

says these sites have ways of detecting when one person is making

several comments under different names. Back in the 1990s, Schneider

was president of a now-defunct doctor rating site called

thehealthpages.com. " Even back then, we had to the technology to stop

that from happening, " he says.

3. Look for specifics, not adjectives

" A general statement like, 'Dr. is really a jerk,' doesn't tell

you much, " says Findlay, a health care analyst for Consumers

Union. " It doesn't get to the quality of care they deliver. "

Findlay says to look for reviews with specific examples of what the

doctor did right or wrong. " Let's say someone's writing about how a

doctor handled a kidney stone, " he says. " You want to know how

quickly that doctor got you to an X-ray. How quickly did they assess

the X-ray? Did you get the medicine you needed? Did the doctor

monitor the case and follow-up? "

4. Look for patterns

Once you've found specifics, look for patterns. Five complaints that

say the same thing are statistically more meaningful than five

complaints about different issues, says Dr. Wachter, associate

chairman of the department of medicine at the University of

California, San Francisco.

" If I look someone up and they have five dings all on a similar theme

and I have a choice, I'm going to go elsewhere, " says Wachter, who

blogs on health care quality issues.

5. Use reviews along with objective information

While patient reviews might be useful, they have several clear

drawbacks, our experts say. First, many doctors have just a few

reviews or none at all. Second, even if a doctor has 20, 30, 50 or

100 reviews, that's still only a small fraction of his entire patient

population -- and a warped fraction at that.

" The person most likely to write is the one who's most enthralled

with the doctor, or the one who's most pissed, " Wachter says. " You're

getting a skewed view. "

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Wachter and others urge patients to check out objective information

about a physician. Some sites with doctor ratings also include

objective information, and there are other places to look, too.

You can find out if your doctor is board certified by going to the

American Board of Medical Specialties Web site. For information about

legal judgments, go to the Federation of State Medical Board's site

and click on your state. The National Committee for Quality Assurance

can tell you whether a physician has met certain quality standards

for treating some medical problems.

One more place to check: your health insurance company, which has

access to information about your doctor that no one else has. Several

insurers have set up systems to measure physician quality.

But would an insurance company, out of self-interest, recommend the

cheapest doctor rather than the best one? Both Findlay and Wachter

say while this was a concern in the past, they both say insurance

company data on doctors are now trustworthy.