How do you find a doctor you can trust—especially when theres a growing shortage of primary care physicians?
Medical experts offer these tips:
1. Ask other docs. Say you like your gyno but need a new family doctor. Chances are, she can recommend a doc worth trusting with her family—and yours.
2. Network. A support group for a particular illness can connect you to people seeking specialists for the same (or overlapping) conditions—an invaluable resource. Google.com has a great directory.
Health.com also has lists of web resources, including support groups by disease. Just click on Diseases & Conditions in the main menu and select a topic.
3. Read reviews. Yelp.com, a free site dedicated to reviews of local businesses and services, has a large section on doctors and medical care. Angies List charges a range of annual fees, based on location, for access to screened reviews of local doctors (and other services). Even Yahoo! features a “local” portal where users recommend MDs. And you can see if a particular doc has a complaint record at Latrogenic.org.
4. Check “best” lists. Most major cities publish lists of their regions top docs in local magazines.