Doctor Search Tips – Find a doctor
Tips for Finding and Selecting a Doctor
The relationship between a person and their doctor is one of the most important personal and business relationships a person will have over the course of their life. It is very important to choose your doctor carefully since a good doctor is critical to maintaining health and possibly extending your life.
The best time to select a doctor is before you need one. As with any purchase of a good or service, you should do a careful and comparative analysis of the doctor you are going to select to give you healthcare. The goal of this page is to provide you with doctor search tips that help you find a general doctor. Sometimes these types of doctors are referred to as a family doctor or a primary care physician. Usually this doctor can be your first point of contact if you have health questions, are sick and need to see a doctor or you need a referral to a doctor that specializes in a particular illness, condition or disease.
Finding Doctors
One of the best ways to find a doctor is to ask a doctor or other healthcare professional who their primary care doctor is. If you have health insurance, you choices of doctors may be limited by the plan to a list provided you with your enrollment in the health insurance plan. Usually, health care plans have a website that also provides a searchable index of doctors and other healthcare professionals that are covered under their health insurance plan. Ask you trusted friends and family who they use as doctors. Also, you can check the American Medical Association website. It has physician finder tool. You can also call hospitals or clinics in your area to get a referral to one of their doctors. Generally, the next step is to identify five or ten doctors that are close to your home or work and make a list so you can compare their qualifications, including skill, knowledge, and board certification.
Important Quality Considerations
The quality considerations may be different for each individual. To figure out what matters to you, you may want to ask yourself and write down what matters most to you in your doctor. Important questions that may help you find a high quality doctors and to reduce the number of doctors on your list to 3 or 4 doctors are:
- Is the doctor a certified in the specialty you are looking for? In finding a primary care doctor you would probably search to see if the doctor is a certified in the internal medicine or family care?
- How long has the doctor practiced (both generally and in their medical specialty)?
- Does the doctor have specialized training in your medical needs?
- Is the doctor affiliated with a hospital you can go to for emergency or specialty care?
- Is the medical facility where the doctor affiliated licensed or accredited?
- Is the doctor a member of any professional medical societies?
Once you have narrowed the number of doctors on your list to three or four doctors, you should call the doctors’ offices to see if they are still accepting patients. If they are, you should personally interview the doctors. To do this properly you should prepare a list of your medical conditions and history, a list of specific questions about what style of interaction you prefer with your doctor. At a minimum you should find a doctor that respect you as a person, listens well, gets along with personally, that can clearly explain things without the use of too much medical jargon and that wants you to ask questions about your healthcare. Also, a good characteristic of a doctor is one that focuses on prevention by encouraging and educating their patients to prevent illness and disease.
Once you have completed these steps make your selection. If over time you and your doctor’s relationship is not satisfactory you may want to go through this process again and find another doctor.