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How useful are patient reviews in determining whether a doctor is a good match for you? There's a surprising amount of controversy about this, with some doctors encouraging their patients to leave feedback and with others asking their patients to sign a form agreeing to not post patient reviews. We ourselves don't know how much weight patient reviews should be given. We do know, however, that the consumers that we've talked to have repeatedly asked for patient reviews, often as the most important factor in their decision.

How useful are patient reviews in determining whether a doctor is a good match for you? There's a surprising amount of controversy about this, with some doctors encouraging their patients to leave feedback and with others asking their patients to sign a form agreeing to not post patient reviews. We ourselves don't know how much weight patient reviews should be given. We do know, however, that the consumers that we've talked to have repeatedly asked for patient reviews, often as the most important factor in their decision.

Our philosophy has been to aggregate whatever information is publicly available and to allow users to filter by the attributes that are important to them. That is, we want to provide a useful tool through which users can express their preferences.

So, looking for patient reviews? We've found over 500,000 of them. And yes, you can filter by average rating and to some extent, by the number of reviews.

Different people have different ideas for what differentiates quality doctors from the rest. Patients, for example, often look at other patient reviews. Some doctors believe that the single best predictor of quality is where a doctor trained for residency. Other clinicians will consider how well-respected a doctor is in the research community. Measuring quality in health care is indeed a difficult problem, as evidenced by the fact that there are entire organizations dedicated to the idea of developing industry standards.

Different people have different ideas for what differentiates quality doctors from the rest. Patients, for example, often look at other patient reviews. Some doctors believe that the single best predictor of quality is where a doctor trained for residency. Other clinicians will consider how well-respected a doctor is in the research community. Measuring quality in health care is indeed a difficult problem, as evidenced by the fact that there are entire organizations dedicated to the idea of developing industry standards.

One thing that people agree on, however, is that a board action is a reason for further investigation. Board actions are issued by the medical board that licenses the doctor for a specific state. For example, one doctor claimed to have satisfied the minimum requirement of continuing medical education when he was unable to furnish evidence of it. Another doctor was reprimanded for gross negligence and unprofessional conduct (among other things). Obviously, some board actions are more serious than others and we don't try to make judgments in terms of which ones can be safely overlooked and which ones should eliminate a provider from consideration. We do, however, bring information together from multiple sources so that you don't have to search each database yourself. Here's one provider who is licensed in 26 states (a clean record in each) -- whew! That would be a lot of databases to search.

Many times, we aren't either. To help with this problem, we've built a big list of conditions and procedures, and a corresponding list of which specialties treat those conditions or perform those procedures. We built the list by observing commonly listed professional interests for each specialty. There are some obvious ones, like knowing that endocrinologists treat diabetes, and that ophthalmologists perform LASIK surgeries. But, did you know that pediatric endocrinologists treat Turner Syndrome, a genetic disorder? We didn't either.

Many times, we aren't either. To help with this problem, we've built a big list of conditions and procedures, and a corresponding list of which specialties treat those conditions or perform those procedures. We built the list by observing commonly listed professional interests for each specialty. There are some obvious ones, like knowing that endocrinologists treat diabetes, and that ophthalmologists perform LASIK surgeries. But, did you know that pediatric endocrinologists treat Turner Syndrome, a genetic disorder? We didn't either.

So, go ahead and give the new functionality a try. Check out the Browse by condition or procedure form in the lower right corner of the home page.