Until recently, word of mouth was one of the most common ways to find a
physician. You find someone you trust like a friend or a family member
and you ask their opinion. These days, the Internet is changing the way
we look for medical care.
Until recently, word of mouth was one of the most common ways to find a
physician. You find someone you trust like a friend or a family member
and you ask their opinion. You get them to refer you to a specialist or
to a general practitioner. These days, things are changing from that
tried and true method. Why? Just like everything else, the Internet is
changing the way we look for medical care. Now there are sites up that
rank doctors and let patients put their reviews online for the world to
see. As more and more people begin to participate in these sites, it is
becoming one of the most popular ways to find a good doctor.
While it might be popular to find a physician online using these ranking
sites, some doctors feel as though there are better ways to go about
seeking the best medical care. For one, they believe that anonymous
opinions aren’t the best way to judge a doctor’s competence. People can
get angry about something that is irrelevant such as a billing error or a
perceived slight and then rail against that doctor on the Internet,
giving a skewed version of the incident. But most experts agree that
these sites can be beneficial as long as people go into them with an
open mind and use some common sense.
One important thing is to decide what your priorities are before looking
at these sites. Remember that some opinions and rankings are going to
have little to do with your own experience with the doctor. For
instance, sometimes you will see a bad opinion that seems to be centered
around how far the office is away from the critic’s home. Obviously
this is the type of thing that won’t factor in to your decision making.
Be careful when looking at the opinions. Note when it seems as though
the critic has an unwarranted chip on his shoulder.
Also, make sure there are a lot of reviews before you put too much stock
into any one of them. One review means very little. A whole host of
reviews, all of which say similar things, is usually a good indication
that the criticism or praise is valid. It might also help to look at
more than one website. A disgruntled employee or even a competitor may
have made it their business to give bad reviews to a doctor on one site,
but they are less likely to follow them around to a bunch of different
sites to do the same.
