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Find a Healthcare Provider

If you are starting from scratch it’s important to find a primary care provider who can coordinate all aspects of your healthcare. These include family physicians (who treat patients of all ages), internal medicine physicians (doctors for adults), gynecologists (focusing on women’s health) and pediatricians (for children).

If you have health insurance you will likely begin by searching the list of healthcare providers in your health plan’s directory. Alternatively you can use a number of the resources listed below. The AMA DoctorFinder is a good place to start looking for a primary care provider or a specialist. The Healthfinder and MedlinePlus directories are also good options since they reference this resource and others. If you are interested in finding physicians who also practice complementary and alternative medicine you may find it helpful to begin searching for those who have been certified by the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine.

Once you have identified a list of potential providers, it can be helpful to go through the list with individuals you trust, such as friends, family, or individuals who work in healthcare in your community. Ask if they can recommend someone on your list, or any others who are not.

In addition, we have provided links to resources which provide background information to help you choose between providers. The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) has a physician recognition directory of providers who have met their standards in specific areas of healthcare. The links to State Medical Boards and the American Board of Medical Specialties can help you find information to evaluate the standing of a healthcare provider, including licensing, past disciplinary action and board certification.

We have also referenced a number of resources that include patient-rated assessments of healthcare providers together with some of the background information discussed above (see Vitals and RateMDs, which are free, and HealthGrades, which requires a fee). As helpful as patient ratings may be, it’s also important to recognize there limitations, especially when there are only a few ratings on a provider. Here, for example, the impression of a provider can easily be skewed by one or two patients who’ve had unsatisfying experiences and who were perhaps more motivated to rate the provider than other patients who’ve had more satisfying experiences.

Another potentially useful subscription-based service is the Castle Connolly Top Doctor Listings. Doctors referenced here are selected by peer nomination and research and review by a doctor-directed research team.

It can also be helpful to look for additional background information on prospective healthcare providers by entering their names into a general search engine to see whether they have a website for their practice or have published anything that would be relevant to your areas of concern or interest.

Resources

Super Smart Health

Empowering Health and Wellbeing

Find a Healthcare Provider