National Doctor Database

[Guest guest]

I recently became aware of a new site which allows consumers to enter their

docotr's name, practice, city, and state. After a series of questions, a score

is generated. Please, please, i encourage everyone to go enter your doctors,

good or bad. It is completely anonymous.

The site is called the NDDB or The national Doctor Database. It is located at:

http://www.nddb.net/?q=

Here is what it says:

Please rate as many doctors as you can clearly remember seeing, and hopefully

someone will return the favor for you. So that in the future, all of us can

have at least some sort of guide when we need to decide who we are going trust

with our lives.

Purpose

This site was recently started (Aug 2004) to address the concerns we (as a

patient / consumer group) have with the current medical professional

environment. Specifically, it was started in the hopes of addressing the

following

questions we have :

(1) How do you know if a doctor will be willing (and able) to help you before

you spend hundreds of dollars?

Sick people in need of help, especially the chronically ill, are not likely

to have hundreds and hundreds of dollars to spend visiting doctors to find one

who will take the time to treat them in an effective manner. In fact, no one

should have to spend hundreds of dollars merely looking for a decent doctor.

Before you go to a dealership, or buy almost any type of product, you can

find reviews of it somewhere. Where do you go to find consumer ratings and

reviews of doctors? It is our intention that the National Doctor DataBase will

fill

that void.

(2) What recourse do you have when you are treated poorly by a doctor or

his/her office staff?

Doctor's offices are like any other business, except for the fact that they

believe themselves to be unaccountable to their patients for anything they do.

This must be changed. In any other retail business, if you are treated badly,

you can appeal to higher powers in the company and perhaps get a refund

(something you will most likely never get from a doctor's office), or at least

an

apology. If that does not work, you can take them to the BBB or you can review

their service at any number of places.

(3) How can we, as consumers, change this environment such that we stop

paying exorbitant fees to speak with a doctor for less than 10 minutes?

Most everyone needs a doctor at some point in their life, and many of them do

a great service to society. I believe the only way to effect a change in this

environment is to reward the doctors who actually try to help their patients

with the benefit of added business. The flip side of this equation, is that

doctors who do not care for their patients, and treat them poorly, should be

denied business. Thereby encouraging growth of practices that treat their

patients with dignity and care, and discouraging the growth of practices that

only

seem interested in the money they demand before you even see the doctor.

Hopefully this information clears up the purpose of this site. In essence, it

is an effort to change the landscape of the medical community. So that it

caters to the patient's needs, rather than the patient catering to the doctor's

financial needs.

We are harnessing the power of you, the consumer, to improve everyone's

chances of being able to see an excellent doctor the first time you need one. It

is

hoped that by collecting, collating and sharing the information by way of the

National Doctor Database everyone who participates will benefit from the

shared knowledge.

Who is this site for?

This site is for consumers, and consumers alone. And we are certainly willing

to take input on this, but we feel this site is not for medical

professionals, and ask them not to use this service for two reasons :

(1) They may try to find out who reviewed them based upon clues in their

review and treat them unfairly in some manner.

(2) It is our feeling that the low-rated doctors have not changed their

opinions or apologized for years, they have simply turned patients away,

offering

them no help or hope for the money they have paid. Therefore, they do not

deserve any more business. For them to use this site to " improve " their practice

would truly be an insult to all their past patients, as well as simply

white-washing over the true problem : that this doctor has not cared for his

patients.

And again, the other side of this equation is, the doctors that have been

doing their job well from the beginning deserve to be singled out and rewarded

for being excellent doctors; doctors who have ALWAYS been good doctors.

In summary, no survey is going to make someone a caring individual. They are

or they aren't. We plan to help you determine who is, and who isn't, and let

you freely decide where to spend your money.

This is an excellent advocacy activity.

Karyn E. , RN

Executive Director, PAI

http://www.pancassociation.org

Pancreatitis Association International