Compare Doctors
This page is Lastly.US
This page tells you how to find the specialist doctors who do a procedure most. For general doctors, you can ask people you know. But they don't use the same specialists as you, so they can't advise well. Referrals from general doctors may be fine locally, and this page lets you look more widely.
A lot of research shows that specialists who do a procedure most, are generally the best at it. They get the most referrals from other doctors, who see good results, and from satisfied patients. Also, constant practice makes these specialists even better. US News & World Report, Healthgrades, and Medicare Physician Compare show each doctor's experience with some procedures. They don't show you how to sort, to find the most experienced. Step 3 below will show you how.
🍎"Patients can often improve their chances of survival substantially, even at high-volume hospitals, by selecting surgeons who perform the operations frequently." Birkmeyer et al, NEJM
🍎"Patients with [heart attacks] who are treated by high-volume admitting physicians are more likely to survive at 30 days and 1 year." Tu et al, JAMA
If your doctor is part of a health system, ask them to post online how many procedures each doctor does. That will help patients more than all the "nice" testimonials.
This site does not recommend doctors, hospitals or anyone. It summarizes information, mostly from Medicare, so you can decide.
Step 1.
The first step is always to consider what care is needed, what the options are, and what questions to write out for the specialist. For medical options, you can subscribe to UpToDate from Wolters Kluwer for a week; it has the most detail on different approaches. And you can see reviews of the doctors by patients and other doctors, which tell you what to expect.
Dr Kussin's book, Doctor, Your Patient Will See You Now (buy or borrow) suggests almost always getting a 2nd opinion, and getting it from another specialty (online p. 184).
The bottom of this page links to specialists in several serious diseases.
The next steps will take a few minutes.
Step 2.
Find the code number of a procedure you may need. These are called CPT or HCPCS codes. Use a search engine such as:
🦵🏽Knee replacement CPT code, which will show you 27447 for total knee replacement and 27446 for partial knee replacement
🧐Cataract surgery CPT code, which will show you 66984 unless special equipment is needed, then 66982
Step 3. This step is easier on a computer than on a phone.
🍊Look in the top left corner of this Medicare page, and choose the latest year. Even if you don't have Medicare, they have the most complete public information.
🍊Stay on that page. Click the box for Filter.
Select column for the Provider who will render services: Rndrng_Prvdr_State_Abrtvn.
In the box for Select Condition, choose Equals.
In Enter Value choose a 2-letter state abbreviation, like CA FL NY TX etc.
🍊Then click Add Filter Condition. Choose HCPCS_Cd, to Equal the code you found online, like 27447
🍊You can Add Filter Condition again and choose Rndrng_Prvdr_City or Rndrng_Prvdr_Zip5, etc. For Zip5, you may want, instead of Equals, to use Starts with and give it the first 2 or 3 digits of your zip code, to get a bigger area.
🍊Click the box for Apply filters, or press enter. Above the filters, after a delay, it will show how many records you've chosen.
🍊Now there's a wide table, with a scroll bar at the bottom. Drag the scroll bar all the way to the right side, where you see the column heading Tot_Services. Click the top of the column to sort small to big. Click the column heading again to sort big to small. (It responds in a few seconds if you first selected one or a few procedures. Trying to sort all 9 million records would be slower.)
🍊Now the most experienced doctors are at the top, and their names and addresses are on the far left. Back near the top of the page, the Manage Columns button lets you hide any columns you don't need, and drag the triangles to change the order, so the Tot_Services is near the names. Near this button is an Export button if it's easier for you to download into a spreadsheet. There's another button to show 10 - 100 rows per page.
If you don't find experts near you, look farther out, or near a relative where you can stay during treatment.
🍏Also at the right of the wide table, you can see the average amount Medicare allowed for each procedure, and the average charge each doctor submitted for the procedure. Most insurance pays somewhere between the two, and people without insurance need to bargain for themselves. These costs do not include fees of the hospital, anesthesiologist, etc, which you can research separately. If you see surprisingly low costs, you may be seeing a physician assistant or assistant surgeon who assisted the main surgeon.
When you find some possibilities, you can look for patient reviews, whether they accept your insurance, and how soon they offer a first appointment.
General doctors, non-specialists
Most people use recommendations from people they know, and don't need data on general doctors.
If you know spreadsheet pivot tables, you can use the same Medicare page to find doctors who spend more time with each patient. More time has benefits: They listen, and examine you in more detail. They've listened and examined other patients in more detail, so they've learned about diseases in more depth.
HCPCS codes for most outpatient visits begin with 9921, and the codes show the length of the visit. Other codes apply to the first visit and hospital visits.
Download, and use a pivot table command to sum the Tot_Services for outpatient visit codes at each doctor. Then you can find which doctors have the highest ratio of long appointments to short ones. (My own approach is to download, then make a new column which concatenates last name, first name, street, city. I use that as the rows in the pivot table, and HCPCS codes from 99212-99215 as the columns, and get sum of Tot_Services. It gives me sum of patients who had each length of appointment at each doctor, and I can calculate ratios.)
HCPCS. Minutes. Level of decisions in an office visit
99215 40 High
99214 30 Moderate
99213 20 Low
99212 10 Straightforward
You can filter one at a time for Rndrng_Prvdr_Type Equals
Family Practice
General Practice
Geriatric Medicine
Internal Medicine
Obstetrics & Gynecology
Pediatric Medicine
Or click Advanced Filtering and group these with Or, while you select location with And.
You can also filter for each of the following Rndrng_Prvdr_Type, though many work in specialty care, not general care:
Nurse Practitioner
Physician Assistant
