Remember when you used to get a book from your HR department with all of the doctors in your PPO network? These PPO directories were great, but very easy to lose. Then, when you needed to find a medical doctor, you had to go back to the HR department and ask for a new directory. When you had your book, you could find your doctor based on his or her specialty, but lots of times the phone number or address was wrong or changed, or the doctor wasn’t practicing at that location anymore.
Now, we have the internet and the majority of people surveyed say they use the Internet all the time to look up just about everything, including their doctor. You can find a doctor on the internet in a matter of seconds. Google is awesome! You just type something like “Family Doctor Denton, TX” or “Medical Doctor Dallas, TX” and all fo the doctors close to your location will come up on the first page. Or, you can go to your specific PPO network’s web site. Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) has a very user-friendly web site for searching for medical doctors. To find your nearest family doctor, you just type in a city and state and the type of doctor and all of your options are listed instantly. Aetna and United Healthcare also have really great doctor finder tools. The internet is probably the easiest way to find a doctor.
Of course, you could go to the yellow pages in your phone book, but you never get all of the information that you want about your doctor. You get a phone number and address and if the doctor spent a lot of money on ad space, you can see some of the features of the medical practice. Otherwise, you still need the internet. That proably explains why so many people are switching from the phone book to the internet. My wife asked me the other day to look in the phone book for something. I said, “huh? we have a phone book? where at?”, then I used the internet. Google was way faster than looking through a phone book.
So, how do you find your family practice doctor when you need to see a medical doctor? Do you look in the phone book for a doctor or does your HR department still offer a directory of doctors. Or, are you like most people now and you use the internet: Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. Doctors have to use a web site these days because you most likely want to see it.
WOLMED doctors have a web site (www.wolmed.com), but we can also be found on Twitter, Facebook, www.superpages.com, www.yellowbook.com, www.yellowpages.com, www.spineuniverse.com, Aetna, BCBS, United Healthcare, Humana, Cigna, Unicare, carfpainmanagement.blogspot.com, wolmed.blogspot.com, Technorati, BlogCatalog, Zimbio, and more to come. We recognized that patients want to have easy access to finding a medical doctor. We’re trying to help make it even easier.
How do you find a doctor when you need medical care?
