When you’re choosing a new doctor, the first concerns should always be the doctor’s qualifications and reputation. The most important thing is to receive quality care, whether you’re looking for someone to conduct an annual physical or you’re seeking a specialist to deal with a particular illness. But that’s probably a given; there’s no one out there intentionally looking for sub-optimal medical care, after all!
But let’s assume you have a few options on your plate. They’re good, reputable doctors you can trust with your health. How then do you narrow down your choices? Here are a few things to think about while you make your choice.
Location Convenience
You don’t want a visit to the doctor to be a nuisance, so ideally you’ll want to pick an office relatively close to your home and/or place of business. And you may have more options than you expect. These days even if you’re looking for something as specific as cancer care or expertise in some other area, you can often search online and narrow down doctors by location. Again, the quality of the care is still the most important thing, and you should always keep that in mind. But if it’s a toss-up in that area, you might want to consider location convenience as an important factor.
Facility Cleanliness
If you’re looking for a doctor, chances are you care about your health. And if you’re concerned with your health, you probably don’t want to be in an environment that’s anything less than sparkling clean when you visit your doctor. Now, most doctor’s offices, hospitals, and clinics practice the basics. They’ve hired professional janitorial services, the staff is required to stay clean, and there’s probably hand sanitizer just about everywhere you look. But you can usually just tell when a particular office takes cleanliness more serious than others. Often it’s the newer, more state of the art facilities that are best for patients who don’t want to get sicker.
Nurses & Staff
You can’t always get a feel for the professionalism of the staff before you actually sign on with a new doctor. But if possible, try to compare staffs as you choose between doctors, even if it’s just through your experiences on the phone as you try to gather more information. The doctor is the most important factor, but you’ll probably wind up interacting more with staff members, secretaries, and nurses, which makes them all very important in terms of the overall experience. If there is one staff that jumps out at you as being particularly helpful or professional, you might be most comfortable at that office or clinic. Similarly you may also feel more comfortable with a more specialist in what you’re visiting for such as urology rather than a general practitioner.
Technological Component
There are certain tech products and applications you always expect to see in a modern doctor’s office. For example, you’re now fully used to seeing a doctor read your chart on a laptop or high-end desktop rather than from a paper file. You may even know that there are specific doctors watches that are preferred by physicians for various reasons related to comfort and ease of use. But these days technology in doctors’ offices means something different. More and more clinics are making use of advanced tech involving new medical sensors for patient care, and cloud-compatible devices for keeping records. These types of things make an office more efficient and reliable, so you might want to consider how far along your different choices are from a technological perspective.
