I’m changing jobs to a new area and I need to find a new primary care physician. My best guess is that I should find someone in my insurance network, old enough to be experienced but young enough to be up-to-date, and preferably a male with warm hands and small fingers. Any suggestions on how to locate what I need? I have no major maintenance conditions but I’ve just turned 40 and I find I’m doing constant minor patching.
You can use this website here: American Board of Family Medicine | ABFM | American Board of Family Medicine
It’ll locate Board-certified family physicians for you.
Board certification is pretty much the gold standard to look for, when choosing a physician.
If you’re looking for a primary care doc (and it sounds like you are), best to look in the specialty of Family Medicine (where I am certified) or Internal Medicine.
Do you know your new co-workers, or have time to get to know them? Referrals are also a useful tool.
I found my primary care doctor because I had a friend who was his office manager. There were two doctor’s there, and she said “Make sure you see this one…he’s great. The other one…well…”
But many of my friends found theirs by saying “Hey D/a…you have good people for just about everything. Can you recommend a primary care doctor?”
-D/a
I am not trying to take over the thread, I think the OP may be assisted by this question.
Qadgop, in my insurance network website I see categories like family medicine, internal medicine (isn’t it all?), general practitioner, etc. Are these different? Why would the OP want one more than the other?
I am leery of primary care centers affiliated with particular hospitals or large networks. I am concerned that corporate-type upper management can interfere with primary care-giving, looking to drum up extra business and/or cut corners to improve the bottom line and executive salaries.
I went with a female to better ensure the small fingers, but YMMV.
I just picked mine at random and got lucky. He was setting up a new practice and wanted patients. I interviewed him (you can do that on request for any competent one and some of hem insist on it) and decided to go with him. It was a good decision because he grew to know my family and literally saved my life in a severe emergency by forcing specialists to do with they needed to do a few years ago going well above and beyond the call of duty.
The main problem you might have is that many offices are closed to new patients. They can only take so many and have a reasonable workload. You can shoot for one in their early to mid-thirties however. They don’t usually have a full practice yet and hit the sweet spot between current knowledge and raw experience. Plus they usually have energy and good customer skills before burnout has set in. A good primary care doctor should stay with you a long time so judge how long you think you will need one in your current location and ask to interview them about how their practice works. If they won’t do that, it is a bad sign so move on to the next one.
That… plus, it wouldn’t have even occurred to me that my primary care practitioner would be other than family care or internal medicine. Isn’t it kind of the point to see a generalist first?
They are all roughly the same with minor differences. Family Medical and General Practitioners can see almost any general case from kids to the very old. Think a small town doctor who can see everyone from young Tommy to Grandma Betty. Internal Medical doctors are also general practitioners but they usually see adults only. You would also need a Pediatrician to be a primary care doctor if you have kids if your own doctor only does Internal Medicine.
A doctor who is boarded in family medicine has completed a certified 3 year training program in family medicine. In addition, they’ve passed a certifying exam. Also, to stay boarded the doc must continue to regularly complete training courses and educational modules and pass exams to demonstrate ongoing competency and show one’s still up to date. Family medicine docs receive training in internal medicine, general surgery, pediatrics, neonatology, ob/gyn, and a variety of other common subjects such as cardiology, dermatology, etc.
Similar requirements apply to most younger board-certified internists. Those internists in their mid to late 50’s and older may have gotten boarded in internal medicine before recertification became standard, however. Their certifications are lifetime. These guys generally didn’t get the peds/ob/surgery training.
A doctor who calls him/herself a general practitioner or primary care physician may have only completed the requisite training to get themselves licensed; generally 1 year of training after graduating from medical school. The requirements for staying licensed are far less stringent than the requirements for maintaining board certification. These docs may have done a basic surgical internship, or a rotating 1 year internship, then gone out and hung out their shingle. They may have had more training than that too, but they might not have finished a residency. Or if they did finish it, they didn’t manage to pass the exam, or chose not to take the board exam.
A lot of primary care physicians or general practitioners out there are not board certified. They can be quite competent (and board certification is no guarantee of competence), but then again they may not be. When in doubt, go with a physician certified by a reputable specialty board. Here one can find boards generally recognized as legitimate: http://www.abms.org/
(I’d avoid like the plague anyone pushing their board status in such things as homeopathy or naturopathy.)
As far as narrowing down the selection, you can ask people you meet in your new town. I found a gyno when I first moved here, by asking female co-workers.
I picked my initial primary care doctor here semi-randomly: a local medical center had an internal medicine residency program (and I had been with a family practice residency program) and they were convenient, so I went with them. Then I was on long-term out-of-town travel for a couple of years; when I came back, I decided I wanted to go with a practice where I didn’t have to switch doctors every year or so. So, I asked the gynecologist for some names.
My husband went with one of them, I went with another one in the same practice. I told my husband that when they asked “who referred you”, and he listed a gyn, he should say he used to be a woman but had a sex change :D.
We recently had to switch again (our primary care doc was going with the concierge approach and we didn’t have 3,300 dollars a year to spare). Our new practice is on the list that the former doc provided (she’d spoken with a number of local doctors), and I also asked the gyn - who mentioned the same practice. They’re reasonably convenient, and it didn’t take a month to get the initial appointment.
I did actually meet with one other doctor before making the switch - a local family practice clinic. Two of those doctors had gone concierge, one wasn’t accepting new patients, and the fourth was - but it took a month to get in. And she was brusque, very hands-off about some meds I’m currently on, brushed off my suggestion that I have my labs done before my next appointment (seriously: we knew what they’d need to be, and I hate getting garbled phone messages about the results after a visit, what if I have questions???).
Another thing to consider: how can they respond if you have something truly urgent come up. I have asthma - which is not especially brittle, but if I get a bad respiratory infection, it can go from worse-than-usual to needs-big-drugz in 24 hours. If I can’t be seen reasonably quickly, or at least get some scrips phoned in to tide me over until they can fit me in, I can go from feeling awful and having a little trouble breathing, to being in significant distress. I got blown off, once, by a clueless receptionist (I had an appointment for the next day but started crashing; asked if they could phone me in some steroids). I was at the point where I could not lie down, and really should have gone to the ER or at least urgent care… but when you’re that ill, your judgement can get bad.
So in summary: in addition to doing the vetting re board certification etc, you need to weigh the personalities and the convenience, especially if you expect this is someone you need to see more than once a year or have a condition that might need a visit on fairly short notice.
I’m not Qadgop, but as I understand it, internal vs. family means an internal medicine doc usually only sees adults, where family practice will see younger members of the family as well. I can’t speak to the difference between those and GPs, though a GP sounds more like family practice.
Oooh - something else to consider: my insurance company has a “doctor finder” where you can plug in various conditions and they’ll help narrow down the choices to those who have decent experience with those conditions. I don’t know exactly how it works - maybe they do some matching between diagnosis codes issued by the doctors. See if yours has that as well.
IMO, not only do I think this is a useful tool; I would say it should be your primary tool. You just don’t know who you’re getting. Like the old joke goes… “What do you all the student that finished last in medical school?”
“…Doctor.”
It is possible you’ll get lucky but why risk it? In my case about 15 years ago, all management employees at my company had to get a physical; of course they paid for it. I went to there doctor, and he’s been my personal physician ever since.
I have a feeling I’ve answered this here before. Before our daughter was born twelve years ago, a doctor spoke to a group of us at a childbirth class. We chose him as the pediatrician for our daughter–he’s certified in pediatrics and internal medicine and is a partner in a small “family medicine” primary care group. A year or so later when we switched our insurance plan to an HMO that required having a primary care physician, we asked him if he’d take us as patients, too. We’ve all been with him ever since.
Don’t laugh. I used Yelp. I used it to find one who was close to where I work as opposed to close to where I live. Most of his patients posted very positive things about him, so I interviewed him and started going. I just love him.
And his office is right next door to a sushi bar.
I’ve been moving all my specialists to the same hospital. It’s where I had my recent heart surgery. But my primary doctor was in a different hospital, and there were problems with him not being “in the loop.” In this hospital, everyone with the same specialty is about equally qualified; there’s no such thing as a bad doctor (or nurse, or any other job). So I just called the Primary Care department and asked for the doctor with the earliest appointment. They got me an appointment for the next day.
Slow, but he has the best bedside manner, is willing to listen to new ideas, and actually keeps up on his research. If it weren’t for having to wait hours to see him, I’d think he was the best ever. (I just try for early appointments.)
Moved to new house in a new state. Asked the next door neighbor, who was about our age, she recommended her PCP. That was 7 years ago, and we love our doctor. As do a lot of folks, apparently; she had to stop accepting new patients last year.
Sounds like my now ex-doctor - she liked to really take her time with the patients. If I had 3300 bucks to spare (the concierge fee for both of us) I’d have stayed put. She guessed (correctly) that I had thyroid issues the first time she met me. She knew about Restless Legs Syndrome (and one treatment for it) back when other doctors were saying “it’s all in your head” (true, sort of :p) or “try quinine”. She learned to trust me, which is huge - there are a lot of doctors who completely pooh-pooh what the patient says, treat the patient like an idiot, or even outright manipulate the patients (I’ve run into a few like that).
Which all bears out that you need both sides of things: a doctor who has the appropriate Mad Doctoring Skillz, and the appropriate personality for you. The first, you can often find out online. The second, you need the in-person meeting.
As a funny aside, on the “manipulating” front (sort of): I saw a neurologist about 3 years back, for my RLS and other sleep disorders. He ordered bloodwork: the usual ferritin, thyroid, B12 etc. levels that a RLS patient needs to have checked. After I had the bloodwork done and saw the statement from the lab, I got curious about some cryptic test name… googled it, and started snickering.
But I’m weird though: some patients will be OFFENDED that the doctor is testing them for SYPHILIS :p.
It was medically appropriate (late-stage syphilis could be a cause of some of the symptoms I had) but I can definitely understand why he didn’t explicitly mention that one.
So I’m not pissed, though I wonder how he’d have answered if I’d asked him specifically about which blood tests he was ordering.
I pick one at random. Then, when I call, if the first appointment is months out, I move on and scratch them off the list.
I go to the first appointment and gauge their behavior. I rarely ask for recommendations. What’s good for one may not be good for another.
I found my gyn totally randomly and they are wonderful.