They cost a lot, but their price can be irrelevant. They advertise, but few people decide to use their service because of an ad. They sell a professional service, but often what counts is their personality.
They are doctors, and choosing one is among the most unusual choices a consumer makes.
For starters, doctors offer one of the few products or services for which price may be considered a secondary concern-depending on the consumer’s circumstances and medical insurance coverage.
And when people choose a place to go for medical care, usually they don’t leaf through the Yellow Pages as they would to find a muffler shop or a hardware store.
That’s because choosing a doctor, especially a family doctor, is a decision that often hinges on something intangible: how you feel about the person to whom you have entrusted your health.
Katie Boyd, a 26-year-old North Side woman who hadn’t bothered to obtain a doctor until stomach pains forced the issue more than a year ago, said finding someone with the right personality was “a big part” of selecting her personal physician.
“You’re sick and you’re down and you just want someone who is going to be nice and make you better,” said Boyd, who found her doctor by word of mouth.
Searching for someone to make you better is becoming an increasingly frequent task for Americans, according to Dan Mier, a spokesman for the Chicago-based American Medical Association. He said the growing mobility of our population and changes in insurance coverage have sent many patients looking for new physicians.
The choices can be overwhelming.
More than 17,000 doctors see patients in the six-county Chicago area. There are 23 kinds of physicians, ranging from old-fashioned general practitioners, sometimes called internists, to specialists such as cardiologists. And that doesn’t count the hundreds of types of subspecialists such as nephrologists (kidney doctors).
Fortunately, there is help. Detailed information about doctors is available from a variety of sources: local medical societies, hospital referral services and for-profit services that match doctors to patients.
Despite the availability of those sources, talking to friends and family is the most common way of looking for a doctor. And it’s a very good way, according to the AMA.
“You can better judge (by talking to friends) than by computer matching,” Mier said.
Even the company that operates Prologue, the doctor-patient matching service, acknowledges that 70 to 80 percent of people pick a doctor by talking to people they know. Twenty to 30 percent use the Yellow Pages, Prologue, or other sources, said W.P. Dunlap, vice president of marketing for Boulder, Colo.-based Consumer Health Services, which owns Prologue.
But Dunlap argues that Prologue is better than talking to a friend, because the service offers reams of information on nearly 1,300 doctors in the Chicago area.
“It’s easy to get a friend to say, `Go see my doctor.’ But it’s tough to get any substantive information from a friend because we don’t know much about our doctors,” he said.
When consumers make the free call to Prologue’s number (800-362-8677), they speak to a “counselor,” who runs a computer search for a doctor based on criteria supplied by the caller.
The location of the doctor’s office, the physician’s gender, age and office hours, a description of the doctor’s treatment style, what sort of ailments the doctor likes to treat and 1,700 other pieces of information can be used to find the right doctor.
If a doctor is found, an appointment is made while the caller is on the line. Doctors pay $250 to be listed in the Prologue computer and then pay $110 every time a caller makes an appointment with them by using the service.
But how would health-care reform affect Prologue? “There will continue to be some level of choice that consumers have among the physicians,” said Matt Donaldson, chief operating officer of Consumer Health Services. “So long as there is choice, there is going to be a need for information.”
Prologue has no comparable competitor, but the free referral services run by medical societies and hospitals are similar, if less extensive.
Medical societies exist for Cook County-where it’s called the Chicago Medical Society-and also for Du Page, Kane, Lake and Will Counties (but not McHenry). They are listed in the phone book with the county name first.
These groups usually will give a prospective patient the names of three doctors who work near the caller and practice in the specialty the caller desires. But some groups will supply only names of doctors who are society members.
If you are looking for a doctor associated with a well-known or nearby hospital, many hospitals now have in-house services that refer callers to staff doctors. And medical groups exist that will refer you to doctors within certain specialties.
However you choose to search for a doctor, the American Medical Association and people who run referral services suggest you mull your decision carefully. Here are some things to consider:
– Qualifications. A doctor must be licensed. A call to the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation at 217-782-0458 will put you in touch with a state employee who can verify whether a doctor has a license, when it was issued and when it will expire. A tip: Call soon after the office opens at 8:30 a.m., before phone lines get tied up.
The AMA’s American Medical Dictionary, available at public libraries, lists every physician’s medical school, field of practice and any specialty certifications.
– Insurance. Check that your medical plan covers the particular doctor you want to see. HMO and PPO plans have restrictions on which doctors you can use, though many people aren’t aware of the limits, according to Judi Brown, manager of physician referrals for Northwestern Memorial Hospital on Chicago’s Near North Side.
“A lot of people don’t know what their insurance is. We sometimes are sitting with people on the phone having them read word for word what their insurance card says,” she said. “It’s a confusing world out there for consumers.”
– Communication. People often find it hard to question traditional authority figures such as doctors, especially when their office walls are covered with impressive-looking framed degrees.
Remember the doctor is supposed to be attending to you, not the other way around. Demand respect.
Doctors should be receptive to your questions, including ones about how much they charge and how long patients must sit in the waiting room before getting in to see the doctor.
Good doctors should want to talk about the proposed treatment of your illness. Feel free to ask doctors whether they are experienced at the procedure they want to perform.
Family doctors are often happy to field inquiries from prospective patients over the phone, according to Northwestern’s Brown. And when you talk to nurses and receptionists, remember they were hired by doctors and may reflect their bosses’ work style.
– Feedback. Doctors need to know what you think about their manner, their advice and the medicine they prescribed or the operation they performed. But if you talk to your doctor about a problem and are still dissatisfied, don’t hesitate to switch to somebody else. Tell your physician you are changing doctors and that your records should be sent to the new one.
GRAPHIC: Illustration by Michael Dinges.
KEYWORDS: HEALTH CONSUMER GUIDELINE
ENHANCER: root
