Beyond Google How to Check Out Your Doctor, Your Hospital and Your Diagnosis on the Internet

By Susan Stevens Daily Herald Health Writer

Hit with a devastating diagnosis, you desperately want information about treatment options.

Click. A quick Google search opens thousands of Internet links.

The same goes when you’ve got an embarrassing symptom you’re not sure merits a phone call to your doctor. Or when you switch health plans and need a new internist. Or maybe you’re trying to decide where to go for open heart surgery.

The explosion of health-related information on the Internet means patients can learn more than ever about their doctors, their hospitals, and whatever ails them without leaving their house.

According to a study last year by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a nonprofit research group, eight in 10 people looked online for health information. But wading through the Web doesn’t always lead to the best advice, and basic search engines can drown you with irrelevant data. To help your foraging, we’ve compiled a guide for some of the biggest questions.

Find a doctor

You need a new doctor. Start with the list of providers in your health insurance plan, then delve a little deeper.

Checking individual doctors’ records is still tough to do on the Internet, but you can find a few clues.

Unlike some states, Illinois does not list malpractice lawsuits on its state regulatory Web site (see Web addresses at right). You can, however, go online to learn if your doctor has ever been sanctioned by the state. Regulators investigate any doctor who loses a malpractice lawsuit or settles one out of court; if they determine he was negligent, it will be noted on his record. The state also sanctions doctors who are guilty of unethical behavior.

The subscription database LexisNexis will help you find court records of past malpractice suits in Cook County. The database lists the bare outlines of a case; you’ll still have to go to the courthouse and look through the case file to get more details.

An independent Web site, malpracticeweb.com, claims to summarize malpractice suits filed in Cook County. Consider it a starting point only; site creators show an anti-medicine bias and warn their records might be incomplete and inaccurate. Again, you’ll have to follow up with a drive to the courthouse.

Take what you find with a grain of salt. A malpractice lawsuit doesn’t necessarily mean a bad doctor.

“Most who have been sued many times are physicians who take risks with difficult cases that wouldn’t be accepted by other people,” said Dr. J. Edward Hill, president of the American Medical Association.

More important may be your doctor’s credentials. Check online to see if a doctor is board certified in his specialty, Hill said. That means the doctor has passed tests to ensure he is up-to-date on the latest medical advances – important when a doctor completed medical school decades ago. In some specialties, such as family medicine, doctors must be recertified every six years.

Also check whether the doctor has admitting privileges at one or more hospitals, which means he or she passed fairly rigid scrutiny.

“If they weren’t accepted it probably means they have some issues in their history,” Hill said.

Check the AMA’s site, hospital pages and doctors’ own Web sites to learn their educational history, philosophy of practice, even office hours, all of which can help you make a decision. A medical degree from an accredited U.S. university is important – but a fancy school doesn’t necessarily turn out better doctors.

“It hasn’t been shown to be particularly relevant” to doctor quality, said Dr. Helen Burstin, director of the Center for Primary Care, Prevention and Clinical Partnerships at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. “Often times that’s related to whether your family has resources to go to a private school.”

Better indicators of physician quality probably will emerge in the next few years.

The National Committee for Quality Assurance, a nonprofit quality watchdog based in Washington, D.C., recognizes doctors who excel at meeting standards of care in diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke care and information technology. More categories eventually will be added, spokesman Barry Scholl predicted. You can search their Web site for doctors who’ve won recognition.

What about those lists of the “top doctors” you see in magazines and consumer guides? Factor them into your decision, but be sure to scrutinize the criteria used to rank the physicians, experts advised. Sometimes they’re based on very little data.

If you are looking for a doctor with certain characteristics – such as a black doctor, a Christian one, or someone who is accepting of gays and lesbians – you can use the Web to find him.

Reggie Ware founded Blackdoctor.org last year after a fruitless search for an African-American, female psychologist in Chicago.

“I thought it would be a lot easier, but none of my friends knew any,” Ware said. “I picked up the phone books to look at last names, I called a couple of people and listened to their voices. It dawned on me that if a person wanted to visit an African-American doctor, there’s got to be an easier way.”

While these sites provide patients a starting point, they do not help verify the doctors’ credentials; you must do that on your own.

Helpful sites:

– The American Medical Association’s “Doctor Finder” search engine links to more than 690,000 U.S. physicians. See www.webapps.ama-assn.org/doctorfinder/home.html to search by location, specialty or the doctor’s name. Doctors who are members of the AMA will list where they went to medical school, what insurance plans they accept, hospitals where they have privileges, board certifications or awards, even their office hours. The information is updated frequently.

– The American Board of Medical Specialties, at www.abms.org, allows you to check if your doctor is board certified in any of 24 specialties. The service is free but requires you to register.

– Check out the National Committee for Quality Assurance’s Web site at www.ncqa.org/PhysicianQualityReports.htm to find a physician who is recognized for diabetes care, stroke, heart disease or information technology.

– Several sites list African-American doctors; check out www.Blackdoctor.org, www.BlackDoctorFinder.com and www.Findablackdoctor.com, and the National Medical Association’s site, www.nmanet.org. The Christian Medical and Dental Associations list Christian health providers at www.cmdahome.org. The Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, at www.glma.org, also allows patients to search listings for free.

– Check disciplinary records on the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation Web site, www.idfpr.com/DPR/licenselookup. You’ll find a one-paragraph description of any case resulting in a sanction. For more details, fax the department at (217) 557-8073 to request a copy of the order and other public documents related to the case. If you don’t have Internet access, call (312) 814-4500 to learn if your doctor has been sanctioned.

– For $9.95, you can search the Federation of State Medical Boards, at www.docinfo.org, to learn whether a doctor has been sanctioned by any medical board in the U.S.

– To learn whether your doctor was sued for malpractice in Cook County, see www.malpracticeweb.com. However, the creators warn the files are not necessarily complete – or accurate. Or consult the subscription service www.lexisnexis.com.

– HealthGrades, at www.healthgrades.com, offers background reports on doctors for $12.95 for the first report and $4.95 for additional reports. ChoiceTrust, at www.choicetrust.com, charges $7.95 for a single report or $11.95 for one-day use of the site. These sites can be a quick way to get information, but most of it is available at the other sites listed here for free. The information might not be as up to date as on AMA and state medical board sites.

– The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s consumer guide could help you choose a doctor and make other health decisions. See www.ahrq.gov/consumer/qnt.

Choose a hospital

In our area, most people could choose from several hospitals for their medical care. Knowing which one is best is getting easier as more quality reports are posted online.

Start with the Hospital Compare site sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. The department posts scores in 17 areas, such as how well the hospital prevents infections and follows medical standards in cardiac care.

A quick check will give you an idea of the general quality of the hospital and how it compares to others in your area, Burstin said.

Next check to make sure your hospital is accredited, which means it has passed regular scrutiny by an independent review team. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, or JCAHO, evaluates the quality of care of 15,000 hospitals, nursing homes, outpatient centers and other facilities and posts data online.

You can use JCAHO’s Quality Check feature to assess how well your hospital stands up to national averages.

Patients should go further if they are contemplating a specific surgery or procedure, Burstin said. One hospital might excel in cardiac surgery, while another is renowned for minimally invasive orthopedic procedures.

It pays to find hospitals that perform high volumes of tricky operations. In liver transplant, for example, hospitals that do at least 20 a year have better patient survival outcomes.

“The more you do of something, you’re better at it,” Burstin said.

The Internet won’t help you here. You’ll have to ask how many procedures are performed each year and what the hospital’s safety record is in that specialty, Burstin said.

You might also consider rankings by groups like HealthGrades, Solucient, and national magazines, but doctors advise a little skepticism. Make sure the gold stars refer to the specific program you need; a five-star cancer treatment program doesn’t mean a hospital is equally skilled at treating stroke patients.

Your doctor can be one of the best sources of information about the hospitals in your area. Ask him or her whether a particular hospital has expertise in treating your diagnosis.

Helpful sites:

– The government site Hospital Compare, at www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov, lets you search by location or hospital name to see how your hospital performed in 17 areas.

– Make sure your hospital is accredited and see how it compares with other facilities at www.jcaho.org. Click on “Quality Check” and search by your ZIP code or hospital name.

– The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality lists questions to ask your doctor about hospitals. See www.ahrq.gov/consumer/qnt.

– HealthGrades, at www.healthgrades.com, rates hospitals for treatment of various disorders. Solucient, at www.100tophospitals.com, lists hospitals judged best in certain specialties.

Research a diagnosis

You already know about WebMD. You’ve probably come across the Mayo Clinic’s site and any number of government-sponsored links. Beyond those trusted sites, where do you go for health content on the Web?

Start with your doctor. He or she should be able to point you to some trustworthy sources of information on the Web, Burstin said.

“The immediate reaction of anyone who’s been diagnosed is to Google it,” Burstin said. “The danger of that is you’ll get some wonderful information and some very mediocre information.”

A new Web site aims to guide your way through that mediocrity. Healthline.com offers a medical search engine that trolls more than 100,000 Web sites for articles on whatever ails you.

Healthline translates common language into medical terms so you get better results. A search for “heart attack,” for example, will also produce results on myocardial infarction.

Links are verified for accuracy and timeliness. The goal is to filter out the best information when people want quick answers, said CEO West Shell III.

“When you’re looking for health information, it’s the most important search you’ll ever do in your life, and it’s the most difficult and frustrating,” Shell said.

While you’re asking your doctor for more details on your diagnosis, ask whether he or she knows of any good patient support Web sites. The Internet has grown into a great place to find encouragement through disease-specific bulletin boards and blogs.

Robert Green of northwest Indiana founded an online support group for survivors of spinal cord tumors after his surgery at the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago. Six years later, 800 people post their stories, offer encouragement and lend support to other people with the same illness around the world.

“They’re thoroughly scared, and they’re looking for support,” Green said. “There was a sort of magic to it as people started talking to each other and e-mailing each other.”

The people who post messages on sites like this don’t necessarily have medical degrees, and you must be careful to verify information. But online communities can play an important role in your recovery, Burstin said.

“There’s increasing evidence that people who have a specific condition can really benefit from being able to talk to others who also have that condition,” she said. “Those people do better.”

Helpful sites:

– Search thousands of health-related Web sites at www.healthline.com.

– Find basic health facts on any condition at www.WebMD.com. Also try www.MayoClinic.com.

– For encyclopedic background on all diseases, check www.medlineplus.gov. This site, operated by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, also defines medical terms, gives drug facts and offers referrals to organizations that deal with specific diseases.

– The U.S. Health & Human Services site, www.healthfinder.gov, is a gateway to a host of reliable information from the federal government and other organizations.

– The Merck Manual, a widely used medical reference book, is free online at www.merck.com/pubs. Search for details on your diagnosis and treatment options.

– At www.clinicaltrials.gov, you can look up medical research trials by location and diagnosis.