Comparison Shopping For Doctors
from the does-it-include-shipping-info? dept
While comparison shopping has had its ups and downs over the last few years, new areas for comparison shopping keep popping up. The latest, according to the NY Times, is that there are many attempts to set up "comparison shopping for doctors." It's not quite typical comparison shopping. Instead, it's just an attempt to take some amount of data and let potential patients drill down through the data and see if it fits with what they want. The article notes that a big problem with this is that there just isn't that much useful data available -- and that some of the available data may not really be indicative of anything. Of course, this story gets much more interesting when tied back with the story we wrote about last week concerning doctors getting pissed off that anyone might criticize them online. It seems unlikely that these data-based sites are going to add much in the way of patient reviews -- but it still makes you wonder if doctors will get upset if the "data" ends up making them look much worse than their colleagues.
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Doctor shopping
A quick side note - bedside manner/personality has NO correlation with how good a doctor is.
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Re: Doctor shopping
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doctor's bedside manner
I disagree with this. My family doctor for 15 years just retired and one of the things I liked about him was his "bedside manner/personality." He had the ability to listen to what I was saying and then know the right questions to ask to get the information he needed. Also, because he could clearly explain the problem and what should be done, I was better able to follow his instructions for medication use, therapy, etc.
Because of his communications skills he was able to diagnose conditions that other doctors had missed and I was better able to do what I needed to do to stay healthy.
Unfortunately, this skill is missing in the doctor I choose to replace him. And I spent a lot of time gathering information before I choose this doctor. Unfortunately, there was very little information available on doctors in my area. In the end all I could do was pick primarily based on location and accepting new patients.
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Re: Doctor shopping
There are lots of good things about doctors, but they also all seem to run as a scam clique as well. You cant get reviews on them, you cant get a second opinion if the latter knows you already had a first opinion, a lot of them seem to be lacking basic logic skills and Im not sure Ive every met one that has any similarity to a scientist.
They dont seem to care or understand about the science of your body, just that X does Y in some incredibly huge matrix of cause and effect.
This is born out by the incredibly large number of screw ups that doctors write off as anecdotal.
Finally, except in rare circumstances, doctors dont actually cure you of anything, they just cut things out, sew things up, or supress symptoms but seem to think it was their skill, and not mostly your body healing itself.
Their skill was certainly important in the process, but with the inflated ego many of them walk around with youd think they just laid hands on you and cured you.
Im waiting for Dr. 2.0 to hopefully fix some of these problems. Im sure it'll be out any day now.
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how good a doctor is
I love my GP - he's bright, chatty, confident, and has never made a bad decision wrt. my health.
Dr. Windbag, on the other hand, is a complete prick. He's curt, thinks that having people say 'ahh' is a waste of his precious time, and often cancels appointments because he can't be bothered. He's also a prodigy.
Which one's the better doctor? I'll keep John for my poking and prodding - Windbag I would love to see doing cancer research.
They're both good, they're just good at different things. It's a sad fact that in this day and age being a doctor is part medicine and part PR.
I want to be made to feel at ease, but not if my suave doctor is prescribing a nut-derived medication to me when it will give me an anaphylactic reaction to it.
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Re: how good a doctor is
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comparison shopping for doctors is close but no ci
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