I wish I didn’t have to, but occasionally, it’s important to enter your name and credentials into a search engine and see what comes up. My physician online reputation is important to me career wise. I don’t care too much if someone things my nose is too big or that I’m the hottest thing since sliced bread.
Physician Medicare Lookup
Here is a link to check your Medicare status with the CMS.
This will tell you if you are a Participating, Non-Participating, or Opted-out Medicare provider. Know the difference between these three?
Your License & Background Info
Docinfo helps patients and shady individuals find professional background information on every licensed doctor in the U.S.
This will include all the relevant information about that physician. And the site goes on to encourage physician reporting – even more medication errors. Ouch.
Open Payments Data
Discover how drug and medical device companies financially influence healthcare providers! Be informed about the potential conflicts of interest that could impact your medical care.
Open Payments will tell you how much money you receive from the industry. It’s a good one to check out, sometimes you’ll inadvertently agree to something and see your name end up on this list.
Check out the summary they publish. From my math, the average physician gets $5,000 a year from industry which means that it’s likely a handful of docs taking in the majority.
Search Engine
Finally, do a couple of search engine searches, including Google, Bing, and DuckDuck of your full name, nickane, and full name with credentials.
If you run into any issues there are only reputation protection companies you can reach out to help you fix errors.
It’s important for patients to be able to research their physician and I don’t want to make light of it. But there aren’t any meaningful ways for me to protect myself once something bad happens. Therefore, I need to be proactive.