How to Find the Best Doctors: Florida

Rating:
Summary: valuable if you care about the quality of your medical care
Review: As someone who has used this series for the medical care of my children, myself, my wife, and my elderly mother, I can see no reason that anyone would not want to use it. It's obviously not perfect but it seems that the process of picking out a physician is otherwise pretty random - I would much rather have imperfect information than none. The review entitled "mostly trash" should be disregarded. That reviewer mistakenly notes that the doctors were chosen from a random sample of half (20,000) of all doctors. In fact 20,000 were SURVEYED - which is a very high and very impressive number (for example only 1000 people are typically surveyed in nation-wide opinion polls). Consider also that one usually picks a physician based on the opinion of ONE other doctor. Unfortunately, however, the book is getting pretty out of date. Note to publisher: Please print 2nd Edition!

Rating:
Summary: Beware of how Doctors are chosen in books such as these!
Review: How Doctors are chosen is the real barometer of this books integrity.......As one with a personally distressing visit with one of the Doctors listed, who ironically told me to stay off the Internet and don't do so much reading, I feel these books do NOT deliver. Get referrals from health care workers, such as RN's, technicians, etc., who see the Doctors at work everyday and KNOW who to avoid and who to recommend. Ask ER personnel, anyone at a facility in whom you come in contact. It's the best method for uncovering the best Doctors.

Rating:
Summary: Beware of how Doctors are chosen in books such as these!
Review: I bought this book recently and thought it was really great -- very useful. My aging parents live in South Florida and I wasn't happy with the info I was getting from them about my father's condition -- He's 80, with heart disease and arthritis. Since I used the NY edition myself, I bought a copy of the Florida edition -- and found an excellent cardiologist who recommended a good arthritis specialist. Now I feel alot better about what's going on with their health. I recommend this book to other -- particularly those in my situation -- needing to find reliable medical advice for parents in Florida when they live some where else!

Rating:
Summary: Great book! Very useful!
Review: I bought this book recently and thought it was really great -- very useful. My aging parents live in South Florida and I wasn't happy with the info I was getting from them about my father's condition -- He's 80, with heart disease and arthritis. Since I used the NY edition myself, I bought a copy of the Florida edition -- and found an excellent cardiologist who recommended a good arthritis specialist. Now I feel alot better about what's going on with their health. I recommend this book to other -- particularly those in my situation -- needing to find reliable medical advice for parents in Florida when they live some where else!

Rating:
Summary: I like being an informed consumer when it comes to my health
Review: Since we are moving to a new city in Florida, we wanted to check out doctor possibilities there and ordered the Castle Connoly Guide "How to Find the Best Doctors", Florida edition. The first section of the book gave some practical advice about choosing a new physician. When we turned to the selection, however, we discovered no doctors where we were going and only one where we now live! My personal experience with the latter was so disastrous I would not recommend her to an enemy! If you live in a really big city, this book might be useful but not if you live in a smaller town and want a local doctor.

Rating:
Summary: Best Doctors for Big Cities
Review: Since we are moving to a new city in Florida, we wanted to check out doctor possibilities there and ordered the Castle Connoly Guide "How to Find the Best Doctors", Florida edition. The first section of the book gave some practical advice about choosing a new physician. When we turned to the selection, however, we discovered no doctors where we were going and only one where we now live! My personal experience with the latter was so disastrous I would not recommend her to an enemy! If you live in a really big city, this book might be useful but not if you live in a smaller town and want a local doctor.

Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: This book was a great help in finding a doctor, and I found a new site to <a href="http://www.appointmentnet.com">Find a Doctor</a> called AppointmentNet that goes well with this book - it's the only place on the web that I have found that you can find a doctor, schedule an appointment, request prescriptions, and ask doctors questions. You can only do these things with member doctors, but you can at least search and get contact info for all doctors in the US. Their search was easy to use, and only took me 3 clicks to get the most relevant results for me. I was also able to save my favorite searches and favorite doctors in my account. I think this site makes a great companion to this book, and should be used in conjunction with the doctor selection advice from the book.

Rating:
Summary: I like being an informed consumer when it comes to my health
Review: This Castle Connolly guide gives you a tremendous amount of information on top doctors that have been nominated by other doctors. And I'd rather have some independent company do reserach and tell me that a dotor is really good than just get a list from my managed care company!!I like the info about their background and training, but I was really impressed by stuff like whether they took new patients, how long it would take to get an appointment, HMO's and even foreign languages they speak in the office. I think it would be very helpful for faamilies and seniors too.

Rating:
Summary: Mostly Trash
Review: Took a look at this book at a local bookstore before I bought it, and was glad I did. The first half is filled with alot of common sense information, ie. make sure the MD is Board Certified, experience matters, etc. But, what really makes the book trash, is that the author in the middle of the book tells you how he arrived at his list. He took 39,000 doctor's, and then RANDOMLY cuts the list in half to 20,000. Why?? Who knows. Maybe he didnt want to take the time to thouroughly research who is good, and who isnt, and didnt want to offend, but just wanted to write a book that has a great title, and is a commonly used search term. Either way, it could very well be that the best pick of a given specialty is world-renowned, but wasnt lucky enough to be chosen RANDOMLY from the initial 39,000. You might in fact get a good doctor from this book, but he/she very well might not be the best, had he/she been "lucky". Isnt the point of the book to select the best, and not someone who just got lucky?? Im surprised that a publisher went along with this premise, but it just goes to show you, that titles do sell, and not to judge a book by its cover.