Medicine
Every year, I receive a survey in the mail from Washingtonian Magazine asking me to nominate local primary care and specialty physician colleagues for the honor of being named one of Washington, DC's "Top Doctors." I usually send in a few names, and more often than not at least one of them ends up making the list. As a fellow family physician recently noted on his blog, these "top docs" lists are misleading at best, and useless at worst. By polling doctors about their opinions of colleagues, rather than the doctor's own patients, the list generators virtually guarantee that qualities other than name recognition - bedside manner, diagnostic ability, and knowledge of current research, for example - will have little impact on the rankings. (Incidentally, rankings of "Top Hospitals" also rely on reputation above all else, as a recent study reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine.)
Numerous websites now offer patients the opportunity to give and read about the true inside scoop on the "best" and "worst" doctors. These doctor review websites, however, provide little substantive information that isn't available on the website of your state's medical board, favor patients who have an axe to grind (since satisfied patients are less likely to write reviews), and as one physician columnist has noted, are stunningly easy to manipulate. Consumer Reports, they're not.
- "top Doctors": Who Are They -- And Who Are They Not Necessarily?
. I have written about the US News and World Report ratings of “Best Medical Schools” (Rankings of Medical Schools: Do they tell us anything?, Sept 25, 2009; A New Way of Ranking Medical Schools: Social Mission, June 20, 2010). Another popular concept...
- How To Find Good Health Information Online
A recent survey found that 60 percent of adults have gone online at least once in the past year to look up health information. Unfortunately, finding high-quality health websites is a challenge. Several years ago, a review of 79 studies published...
- The Fda, Social Media, And Big Pharma - Part 1 Of 2
Last December, more than two years after first holding public hearings on the promotion of medical drugs and devices via social media, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration finally released draft guidance to pharmaceutical companies on the very narrow...
- Public Speaking Update
Since I began blogging at Common Sense Family Doctor in July 2009, its posts have been featured in widely read blogs such as KevinMD.com, Better Health, The Health Care Blog, and Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview, as well as the websites of major...
- How To Find Good Health Information Online
A recent survey found that 60 percent of adults have gone online at least once to look up health information. Unfortunately, finding high-quality health websites is a challenge. Several years ago, a review of 79 studies published in the Journal of the...
Medicine
Finding good primary care: beyond "best doctors" lists - Part 1 of 2
Every year, I receive a survey in the mail from Washingtonian Magazine asking me to nominate local primary care and specialty physician colleagues for the honor of being named one of Washington, DC's "Top Doctors." I usually send in a few names, and more often than not at least one of them ends up making the list. As a fellow family physician recently noted on his blog, these "top docs" lists are misleading at best, and useless at worst. By polling doctors about their opinions of colleagues, rather than the doctor's own patients, the list generators virtually guarantee that qualities other than name recognition - bedside manner, diagnostic ability, and knowledge of current research, for example - will have little impact on the rankings. (Incidentally, rankings of "Top Hospitals" also rely on reputation above all else, as a recent study reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine.)
Numerous websites now offer patients the opportunity to give and read about the true inside scoop on the "best" and "worst" doctors. These doctor review websites, however, provide little substantive information that isn't available on the website of your state's medical board, favor patients who have an axe to grind (since satisfied patients are less likely to write reviews), and as one physician columnist has noted, are stunningly easy to manipulate. Consumer Reports, they're not.
So how does a social media-savvy patient search for a new primary care physician when his or her insurance changes? Many innovative practices have launched increasingly sophisticated websites that, in addition to containing basic information such as types of insurance plans accepted, operating hours, and biographies of the doctors and staff, include links to online health risk appraisals, interactive Facebook and Twitter pages. In a future post, I will discuss some of the ways that primary care physicians are using social media to attract new patients and encourage current patients to stay healthy.
- "top Doctors": Who Are They -- And Who Are They Not Necessarily?
. I have written about the US News and World Report ratings of “Best Medical Schools” (Rankings of Medical Schools: Do they tell us anything?, Sept 25, 2009; A New Way of Ranking Medical Schools: Social Mission, June 20, 2010). Another popular concept...
- How To Find Good Health Information Online
A recent survey found that 60 percent of adults have gone online at least once in the past year to look up health information. Unfortunately, finding high-quality health websites is a challenge. Several years ago, a review of 79 studies published...
- The Fda, Social Media, And Big Pharma - Part 1 Of 2
Last December, more than two years after first holding public hearings on the promotion of medical drugs and devices via social media, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration finally released draft guidance to pharmaceutical companies on the very narrow...
- Public Speaking Update
Since I began blogging at Common Sense Family Doctor in July 2009, its posts have been featured in widely read blogs such as KevinMD.com, Better Health, The Health Care Blog, and Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview, as well as the websites of major...
- How To Find Good Health Information Online
A recent survey found that 60 percent of adults have gone online at least once to look up health information. Unfortunately, finding high-quality health websites is a challenge. Several years ago, a review of 79 studies published in the Journal of the...