Consumer-focused healthcare: Interview with Evan Falchuk of Best Doctors: Giving consumers the opportunity to double check diagnosis and treatment dec

Consumer-focused healthcare: Interview with Evan Falchuk of Best Doctors: Giving consumers the opportunity to double check diagnosis and treatment decisions: "Well, first thing for a consumer is to make sure you’ve got that right diagnosis and treatment. Don’t assume, no matter how good your doctor is, and there are a lot of great doctors out there that you’ve got the right answer. So if you have a benefit like Best Doctors, call and ask for help. If not, perhaps you want to ask your employer, do we have this program? But ask questions. Become an informed patient, and make decisions based on the best information you can.

VG: Right, so this kind of reinforces the point and it’s been a continuing theme—many doctors need to do things quickly and they’re forced by the current reimbursement model to do things quickly, and so having somebody else kind of look it over with a clear head and make sure that it all makes sense, is never a bad thing.

EF: Doctors tell me all the time that I spend 5-6 minutes with my patients. So think of a patient whose got an illness, whose been seen by their primary care doctor for 7 minutes, and seen by specialists for 7 minutes, and a third doctor for 7 minutes—the opportunity for stuff to go wrong is enormous."