Typically, a family’s medical network has one or two PCPs (primary care physicians) who know the family best, often a Pediatrician, Internist, or geriatrician depending on age. Add specialists for women, men, organs, diseases, and operations and it gets complex. 

Your objective is three-fold, 1) high quality doctors, 2) open, comfortable communication with and among them, 3) a stable family network that understands and responds to you.

The initial process starts with the PCP(s). You may want to consider ones in your insurance plan’s network if you are restricted to it. They are the gatekeeper for referrals, your care coordinator, and the person who knows you best. You can check basic credentialing at the Federation of State Medical Board’s register, but you need to interview them to make sure you’re comfortable. Usually, their background information is also available on a related hospital or practice website. 

Medicare.gov provides readily sortable information based on the type of service you’re looking for. It can be filtered by several variables. CMS.gov also provides data sets with quality and/or cost information for doctors and clinicians, hospitals, and numerous types of facilities for curious people with computer skills.

Medical insurance plans use different networks of doctors and hospitals. They negotiate the cost of and access to their services each year. If they can’t be renegotiated and repriced, your network may well change abruptly. That is one reason for selecting a plan that lets you go out of network. Another, perhaps more important one, is the ability to access the best specialist for a specific medical problem or operation. 

If you are near large medical systems, teaching hospitals, or HMOs, that cover all specialties well, you may want to pick one and build your team within it. When all your doctors and specialists are on the same health records system, they can share your electronic health record (EHR) easily. Also, EHRs an important tool to couple patients with information about their condition from NIH and similar sources. Information sharing across your team and better medical information for you can be critical if you have several specialists.