This web report is written for generalist doctors as well as motivated patients, to find the most experienced specialists for almost any medical or surgical procedure, anywhere in the country. The article starts with research results showing that the doctors who do any procedure the most tend to be best. Several studies recommend choosing high-volume doctors, to get the best care. The article discusses that approach and how to find such specialists. The article covers issues in working with these specialists, such as avoiding fraudsters, being wary of over-used procedures, and getting 2nd opinions from low-volume doctors for comparison. The strength of the article is its data on high- and low-volume doctors for each medical procedure in each part of the country, as a way to find high-quality doctors. The article gives examples of how to use the data to do a national or regional search, not just for famous hospitals, but for individual doctors, who may not be famous. The search area depends on the mobility of the patient and the importance of the health issue to that patient. Besides doctors’ experience, the article addresses care in teaching hospitals, average costs, ranges of costs, and total costs of surgeon(s), anesthesiologist and facility. The end of the article gives a broad review of, and links to, other ways to find more information on doctors, including some strengths and weaknesses of ratings by other doctors and by patients, comparison of practice patterns among doctors, payments from medical companies, and ways to do national searches of disciplinary and legal actions. The article is on an active page of the website, http://Globe1234.info, which needs to change with the news, so I archived the December version of this article on http://Globe1234.info/2014dec. It matches the pdf submitted to AHCJ, and will stay unchanged. Besides the link to the 2014 text, I provided links to excel spreadsheets which have the names of medical procedures (1 megabyte, globe1234.org/dproc.xlsx), and the highest-volume doctors for each procedure nationally (7 megabytes, globe1234.org/d200.xlsx).
