How are the "best doctors"selected?

[greencreek]

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Just curious about how the annually announced "best doctors" of certain areas of U.S ( I am talking about pathologists only) are selected.

What factors are considered to choose the "best doctors" of each year?
I saw a trend that certain pathologists are repetitively selected each year.

How are they different from the vast majority of other pathologists?

Any thoughts?

 

[pathstudent]

Just curious about how the annually announced "best doctors" of certain areas of U.S ( I am talking about pathologists only) are selected.

What factors are considered to choose the "best doctors" of each year?
I saw a trend that certain pathologists are repetitively selected each year.

How are they different from the vast majority of other pathologists?

Any thoughts?

Well first off doctors can't go head to head like in Wimbledon or March Madness to see who is the "best".

It wouldn't make sense to have the general public vote on best doctors.

It would make most sense to have other doctors vote on who are the best doctors. In terms of being the best pathologist, it wouldn't come down on who is the "best" diagnositician as there is really no way to measure that, but clearly you have to be very good to be considered. Pretty much any pathologist to be considered would have to be a rock solid diagnostician. It would come down to secondary attributes, like leadership and personality. WHich pathologist do docs trust the most and which pathologist do they think care the most about helping them with their patient. That would be my guess about what makes someone describe someone else as the best pathologist.

I have never seen such a list. Are you talking about like the books "best doctors in America". I think I saw something like that once.

I just looked up "top pathologists" and a list came up from US news and Abul Abbas was on it. I don't even think he is known for diagnostics and is known more as a researcher/educator. So that shoots down my hypothesis.

 

[greencreek]

I have never seen a list either, but I happened to work with a pathologist who had been named the "best doctor" in America for quite a few years. I guess once you are selected for one time, the chance of being selected next time is much higher unless you made the top line of news "misdiagnosing a serious condition".

I am still not clear about how it works behind the scene.

thanks for you thoughts anyway

 

[sirenomelia]

Its a BS popularity campaign nothing more and completely invalid. I worked with a "prominent" breast surgeon who was on those lists and was a complete career pirhana aggressively climbing the academic and professional society network ladders. She was technically sound but only dealt with a small fraction of patients a typical busier private practice doctor would do and there was nothing special/ distinguishing at all about her operative or patient care skills.

 

[GeoLeoX]

They are selected by a meaningless set of criteria improbably weighted. I think Malcolm Gladwell has summarized these types of surveys quite well in a recent New Yorker article (available online).

 

[2121115]

They email everyone on the medical staff and there is a popular vote, essentially a popularity contest.

 

[mlw03]

so basically prom king and queen for doctors?

 

[scienceguy19]

It's all a popularity contest... you might be a mediocre doctor but since you have great people skills, people like you more. it's all bulls*

 

[smellycat]

I got a similar type of award. I think it is a scam. You have to pay for your plaque and award.