Consumer Tips for Surgery
One of the chapters in my book, Unraveling U.S. Health Care, which is a guide to the health care system, addresses surgery and tips on how to vet your surgeon and find the optimal facility. Finding a Surgeon The best web site for researching surgical specialties is the American College of Surgeons, which allows consumers to look up surgeons by specialty and location. The web site for this is: www.facs.org. For instance if you need a neurosurgeon, you can enter that and voila, the universe of neurosurgeons is revealed. These specialists are typically associated with university medical centers and large trauma centers. However, it is amazing that some health care consumers still think that neurosurgeons are available at rural 25 bed hospitals. Even if they were, why would you want to have this type of surgery done at that kind of facility? Hospital Safety Rankings Secondarily, it is worth your while to review hospital patient safety ratings before deciding on the facility. Methods to d...