According to statistics, there are approximately 811,000 physicians in America today. With a population that huge, how do you find out which ones are the United States' best doctors? And once you discover which physicians fall into that elite group of the United States' top doctors, how do you get an appointment with one of these highly respected and skilled medical practitioners?

The Old Fashioned Approach

Most people rely on the same method of finding a doctor that their parents and grandparents used—recommendations from friends and family. While this approach can yield a good doctor-patient fit, it does not provide you with any of the hard data that would be used to determine if a physician is qualified to be counted as one of the United States' best doctors. Most people recommend a doctor with whom they feel comfortable and have had positive experiences. They do not take into consideration mortality rates, how many patients a physician has cared for with certain conditions like heart disease, diabetes, infertility, or depression, how many years the doctor has been in practice, or how frequently and successfully she has performed specific surgeries and procedures.

While using the recommendations of friends and family can work if you're healthy and choosing your family doctor, this method has serious flaws when you're faced with an illness like cancer or are in need of coronary artery bypass surgery. And even the choice of a family physician should warrant more research since your internist or your child's pediatrician is essentially the person responsible for helping to keep you healthy and spot diseases in their earliest stages so you can benefit from early intervention and treatment.

An Insurance-driven Decision?

Many people must choose their physicians from a selection of practitioners who belong to their health insurance plan. But, especially when confronted with a life-threatening diagnosis, they find their options limited and choose to look outside their plan for the United States' best doctors who've had success treating the disease they are battling.

While hospitals now routinely offer services to help patients find a doctor, there are no quality screening mechanisms in place with most of Find-A-Doctor lines and web listings. Regional magazine features on an area's top physicians focus on doctors who were voted for by their current patients, essentially the equivalent of a friend's recommendation. In fact, a study published in the American Journal of Public Health by University of Iowa researcher Dr. Arthur Hartz found that "Best Doctor" surveys are rarely based on objective information such as outcome data, but rather on the physicians' position and ability as a researcher, lecturer, or administrator.

Buy the Book or Surf the Web Site

Another resource for those who seek the United States' best doctors is books like those published by Castle Connolly Medical Ltd. The firm offers a range of titles including books that list the United States' top doctors and the best hospitals and senior living and eldercare options. The cost for the volumes is modest—about $30 for paperback or $90 for hardback for the largest tomes. The firm gathers its information, much of which is also available by subscription on its web site, by asking other physicians to nominate their fellow doctors who excel in both research and patient care. They also consider education, residency, board certification, experience, disciplinary actions, and more before deciding whose names will be included in their annual listings.

BestDoctors.com takes a similar approach to culling a list of the United States' best doctors. Their listing is offered through employee benefit plans and insurance companies. HealthGrades.com is another popular resource for people seeking a highly skilled and regarded doctor. The site charges $10 per report on a physician and creates its rankings using quantitative data from the Medicare outcome databases. The American Medical Association offers minimal professional information including where the physician went to medical school and was a resident, hospital admitting privileges, location, and specialty certifications about its members at no charge on its web site.

A Wealth of Names, But no Guidance

While all of the printed and online United States best doctor resources provide information that a savvy health care consumer can use to choose a physician, it remains difficult for even the most educated consumer to wade through the sea of information and make an informed choice.

Not everyone is familiar with the names of United States top doctors like orthopaedist and Sports Medicine specialist Russell F. Warren, Johns Hopkins ophthalmologist Walter J. Stark, plastic surgeon Roger Conant Mixter, or Delos M. Cosgrove, thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic. So even with resources in hand, it's unlikely you would find your way to these renowned specialists.

A New Breed of Resources –

PinnacleCare and Comprehensive Healthcare Advocacy That's why a new breed of resources for finding the United States best doctors is developing. Private health care advocacy firms like PinnacleCare do far more than offer members a list of doctors with a wealth of experience and success treating the complete spectrum of health care issues. PinnacleCare's health care advocates gather a complete health record for each person in a member's family, research and compile a report about which physicians and hospitals offer the best quality care for the disease or health issue, and even help members get expedited access to these doctors, many of whom are members of the firm's Medical Advisory Board or on staff at the Centers of Excellence affiliated with PinnacleCare.

"Medical care in the U.S. is great quality, but with more than 800,000 doctors in the country, it's difficult to know who provides the best care in any given field. In addition, most people have multiple problems, like heart disease and diabetes for example, that are being managed by different physicians, so no one person is treating the whole patient," explains John Hutchins, Managing Director of PinnacleCare. He further notes, "By creating a firm that provides independent, high quality health management delivered by professional health care advocates, we are able to help people who are lost in the system and confused by the multiplicity of options and extremely complex information they now find in the healthcare system. We have a rigorous, evidence-based process for identifying solutions for our Members, including the top doctor options we provide for them."