Where I live all the good, experienced (primary care) doctors are not accepting new patients and the only ones that are, are the new ones just out of medical school. The doctor I’m seeing now I hate and don’t think hes very good and he has a horrible bedside manner. I would like some tips on how to find a good doctor and and tricks on how to get in with them if they are not accepting new patients.
Heh. I found my current GP on yelp. Almost everything said about him by the reviewers was true - he’s professional and courteous and he listens. I like him very much.
A practicing doctor isn’t going to be ‘fresh out of medical school’. They may be just out of residency and have a newer practice but that is still at least a few years out of medical school and they have lots of experience by that point.
I am not sure you can get accepted in a closed practice unless you know the doctor personally but then, you wouldn’t be asking this question if you did. The best way to find a good primary care doctor is to interview a few of them with open practices (a lot of those are going to be younger doctors; it may be a red flag if an established doctor can’t get enough patients to fill his or her practice). It is a free service that any good primary care doctor should offer. You go in before you get sick and just ask about how the practice operates, how long it takes to get an appointment, who handles the on-call hours and their practice philosophy. I found my family’s primary care doctor that way and he has been outstanding. He had just joined an existing practice just out of residency but he was working with an older doctor so I figured we had all of our bases covered.
It turns out that younger doctors can be great too and may have a better grasp of the newest medical treatments and breakthroughs in case you have any unusual conditions.
I have been to a couple younger doctors before and it was obvious they were “green” and I was not impressed with them.
Medical advice is best suited to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator