After nearly 10 years of working on finding the very best doctors and avoiding those who are not the very best, we’ve come up with something quite simple which we practice and strongly advocate to find the very best – and that is that if anyone has any medical problems, that they should email those specialists who they think may be best able to help them asking two questions:-
Firstly, “Is helping those with this particular medical problem or these particular medical problems within your areas of specialisation,” and,
Secondly, “If not, is there anyone else you can suggest?”
We find that, if emails like this are sent out to, say, 20 doctors, you will get 1, 2 or 3 replies that really stand out, that encourage you to think that the doctors who have provided these replies may be worthwhile consulting at least once. And that there are at least 4 chances out of 5 that these doctors are the most helpful doctors you can see, i.e. the odds of finding the very best are increased tremendously.
To us sending out such emails is about finding out two things – firstly, of course, whether helping people like you is one of their areas of specialisation, but secondly if they use ordinary emails.
To us, if a doctor provides a good response, themselves or through others on their behalf, it indicates five things – firstly, that they are into communication and are capable with it, (many doctors aren’t like that if you’re sitting right in front of them,) secondly, that they or someone within their organisation has the job of providing reasonable responses to reasonable emails, EXTREMELY important if you are to go on and become one of their regular patients, thirdly, they are prepared to stand behind what they do and say – it’s harder not to stand behind things that have been put in writing, fourthly, that they are prepared to make sending them letters as easy and convenient as possible, and fifthly, that they have moved on into the 21st Century.
Of course, sending out emails to 20 or more doctors may sound like a lot of hard work, and it is, if you have to first put together a a list of 20 or more doctors with ordinary email addresses, but once this has been done, and you have composed your email, you can easily send out 2o or more emails in less than an hour – depending on whether you want put the doctor’s name at the top of each email or just send out a general email. But it’s well worth doing if it helps you see only the most helpful, and, as we’ve found out recently ourselves, if it prevents you from getting tangled up with a bad doctor or bad doctors.
With this in mind we’ve put together such a list, of 33 Cardiologists, which you can access by using this link.