How to find Dr. Right, pick the best hospital
With a little digging, you can find lots of free information about your doctors, including whether they are licensed in Idaho, where they went to school, where they practiced and for how long, whether they ever faced disciplinary action and whether other patients recommend them. And don’t forget to ask friends, family and other doctors which physicians they see and like.
There are also Web sites to find out how Treasure Valley hospitals and assisted-care facilities stack up on quality, price and other measures. Discuss the information with your doctor.
The information on the following Web sites is free.
Investigating your doctor
1. License check. Every doctor needs a license to legally practice in Idaho. Type Idaho Board of Medicine into your browser or go to www.bom.state.id.us. In a gray column down the right side of the page is a gray box. Click on "license search" and you’ll go to a page that lets you search by name or profession. A red asterisk next to a doctor’s license number means the Board of Medicine has taken disciplinary action against the doctor. Click on the doctor’s name to download the disciplinary file.
2. Check your doctor’s profile in the IDACARE database, or by clicking on "profile" in the gray box on the Board of Medicine site. Doctors fill out the forms, which ask for details about: where they went to school and when they graduated; board certifications, which indicate they have expertise in a specialty or subspecialty of medical practice; practice history; and disciplinary history. One caveat: Doctors are required to fill out the forms, but the Board of Medicine doesn’t verify the information.
3. Drug Enforcement Administration: From the Board of Medicine Web site, you also can link to this federal agency to see if the DEA has taken action against your doctor.
4. To see the board’s most recent actions against doctors, along with other board information, read the board’s newsletters, in a box labeled "past disciplinary actions."
5. Board certification. You can check to see whether your doctors are board-certified by first checking the Web site of the American Board of Medical Specialties. Free registration is required. If you don’t see a board certification you expect to see (maybe because it’s in the IDACARE database) click on "Member Boards" and look there. For example, doctors board-certified in internal medicine will be listed at the American Board of Internal Medicine Web site.
6. MyRegence.com lets its insurance customers recommend doctors to one another in a way that avoids the "I hate" or "I love" reviews that tend to plague such sites. Members rate docs on a variety of measures, including waiting time, time with the doctor and other objective measures. The public can check out this feature through a "guest pass."
7. UcompareHealthCare.com, DrScore, HealthGrades are among sites that offer a variety of information on doctors, some of it free and some not. HealthGrades charges $29.95 for a report on a doctor that includes "disciplinary actions, board certifications, education/training, patient opinions, phone numbers and locations, and much more!" according to the Web site. Most if not all of the information appears to be free from other sources, if you dig a little. Comprehensive reports on hospitals are $17.95.
8. Court check. If you want to be thorough, you can check to see if Dr. Right’s name turns up in civil or criminal cases in Idaho. Search by name or case number. The Web site is
Check out hospitals
1. Hospital Compare, or simply type Hospital Compare into your browser’s search box. This site provides information on how well specific hospitals, including most in Idaho, meet national standards for treatment of heart attacks, pneumonia and other common medical conditions and surgeries, including joint replacements and back surgeries. For some conditions, you also can see whether death rates were lower, equal to or higher than the national average.
2. Joint Commission, or type the name into your browser, is the major accrediting and certification organization (and is also independent and not-for-profit) for more than 15,000 health care organizations and programs nationwide. At the Joint Commission site, see how well Treasure Valley hospitals handle heart attacks, heart failure, pneumonia, pregnancy and related conditions, and surgical infection prevention. These conditions are the most common reasons patients go to the hospital.
3. Idaho Department of Health and Welfare’s Bureau of Facility Standards. See state reports on surgery centers, dialysis centers, home health agencies, hospices, nursing homes and more. The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare’s Bureau of Facility Standards licenses and certifies hundreds of hospitals, nursing homes and other health care providers in Idaho.
It tries to measure quality, and it investigates public complaints. All the bureau’s reports completed on or after June 1, 2006, are available online. To see them, scroll down the Web page to "Survey Results Index" and click on one of 10 categories, including: ambulatory surgery centers, dialysis centers, home health agencies, hospice agencies, hospitals (all types) or long-term care facilities (nursing homes). Assisted living facilities also are inspected for quality of care. More info
4. American Hospital Directory. The American Hospital Directory provides free online data for more than 6,000 hospitals, including many in Southern Idaho. The information you get includes:
- How well the hospital is doing financially, including total revenue and net income.
- All of the clinical services it provides.
- Its Joint Commission accreditation status, with links to those reports.
- Information on how long some patients stayed in the hospital for various types of ailments ... and the size of their hospital bills.