I say this because for many years, I was in charge of Quality Assurance for the anesthesiology department at the University of Virginia.

I spent countless hundreds of hours gathering data and preparing statistics for our department and for the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO).

All useless, all busy work in terms of making anesthesia better and safer at our hospital.

It's a paper-and-statistic-generating machine to create work and an illusion of measurement and progress.

As will be the hospital and doctor ratings put out by Medicare.

Because good hospitals and good doctors deal with sicker patients, and have higher rates of complications and deaths.

And no matter how much of a "fudge factor" you insert to allow for the increased "degree of difficulty," if you will, it simply won't let you compare doctors accurately in terms of whom you should choose to take care of you when you're well and in the event you get sick.

So what should you do?

I'll tell you exactly what I tell people who ask me: don't get sick.

That's really the long and the short of it.

Sure, if you were in Charlottesville I'd know who to send you to, but outside my town I don't have a whole lot to offer you.

You can get a recommendation from your local medical society, find out where your doctor went to school and did his residency, see if he's board-certified, but I'm sorry to tell you that all your efforts are not gonna get you what you want, which is the name of the doctor who's best for you.

Like I said - don't get sick.