The Chicago Tribune reports that a new tool is available to help you choose a doctor. For decades patients have had to rely on word of mouth and insurance listings to choose their physicians. Both of those sources can offer incomplete information, and leave a prospective patient frustrated and just going to whatever doctor has an opening. Most doctors are quite good at what they do and are compassionate people who want to help their patients. But some are not. And going to one of the bad ones can result in suffering personal injury. Just like you would want details about a contractor and how she compares to other contractors in town before having her work on your house, you should want to know about a doctor and how she compares to her peers before she works on you. Having that information could even help you avoid becoming a victim of medical malpractice. Treatment Tracker is a tool to find the information you have been looking for.
The Tribune reports that the purpose of the new tracker is to allow patients to compare health providers with one another based newly released information regarding Medicare Part B. ProPublica, the news agency that created the tracker, used data released by the Centers for Medicaid Services last month that explains the payments made by the agency to 880,000 health care professionals who cared for beneficiaries of Medicare Part B in 2012. The services included in this data are:
*Services delivered to seniors and the disabled by doctors, optometrists, physical therapists, and some other medical practitioners *Ambulance mileage *Lab tests *Outpatient services *Drugs administered