Doctors 101 (Choosing, Working With Effectively, Switching, Paying For)

You can locate a doctor a variety of ways including:

• Referral from another doctor.
• Your insurance company's listing.
• Referral from family, friends or co-workers.
• Via the internet. Following is a list of the leading websites for locating a doctor (in alphabetical order).  When you find a doctor of interest to you who is board certified, note the date when the doctor was last certified. If the date was more than 10 years ago, the doctor has not been tested about current developments. S/he may still be current, but not tested which confirms being to date.
  • American Board of Medical Specialties "Certified Doc": www.abms.org  Allows you to search for a doctor by a specialty. 
  • American Medical Association "Physician Select": www.ama-assn.org/aps/amahg.htm . Provides information on every licensed physician (more than 650,000) in the United States and its possessions. The site also contains "Group Select" which provides information on more than 19,000 group practices.
  • Choice Trust by ChoicePoint: www.ChoiceTrust.com  Provides a credential history report for doctors, including disciplinary actions from all 50 states for a fee. You can also search the doctor's non-professional background on this site.
  • Health Grades "Physician Report Cards": www.healthgrades.com  All doctors listed have been in practice for at least two years, are board-certified in their specialty, and have had no Medicare or state medical board sanctions within the past three years. (If you are interested in a doctor who doesn't receive a top consumer rating, ask him or her why she or he is rated in a certain way.)
  • Health Pages: www.thehealthpages.com  Lists over 500,000 doctors. You can narrow your search by board certification, gender and years in practice. The site also includes comments from patients. If doctors supply the information, the site also includes e-mail addresses, health professionals on staff, office hours, languages spoken, whether the doctor is accepting new patients, and fees.
  • Web MD "Find A Doctor": www.webmd.com  Provides information on more than 500,000 doctors. This site also contains provider directories (health insurance affiliation) for more than 300 managed health care plans.

Oncologists: http://www.plwc.org/portal/site/PLWC/menuitem.724de8b96edd64acfd748f68ee37a01d/?vgnextoid=56e6ea97a56d9010VgnVCM100000f2730ad1RCRD  Members of American Society of Clinical Oncologists can be located through this site.

To find a doctor who makes house calls: See the website of the American Academy of Home Care Physicians, www.aahcp.org . It lists doctors by zip code and state served.

To find a doctor who provides medical advice over the internet or telephone: To find websites such as www.Teladoc.com , type "telemedicine" in your favorite search engine.

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