Theodore Schwartz: recommendation

Transcript context

…How do I find someone, say, as good as you? Do I call up Harvard? What do I actually do, concretely? I google who’s the best neurosurgeon? Unfortunately, I’ve tried that, and you get some oddball answers. Some of them are correct; some of them are incorrect. I think the best thing to do is try to find someone that you know, a friend of yours who’s in the healthcare profession, and have them call around and ask their friends because they’ll know someone who is a neurosurgeon. Really, neurosurgeons know who are the top neurosurgeons doing a particular operation because those are the people who write the most articles, give the most lectures, do the most volume. They’re people that are known to be very, very good. It can be very hard for a consumer to know that. What I found is, most consumers are so awed by the fact that you are a brain surgeon, that you’ve gone through this training, that they take what most surgeons tell them at face value. I happen to practice in New York City, where everyone gets second, third, fourth opinions, so people are a little more critical about their physicians and do more research. I think it is very important to get second, third opinions and speak to people in the medical profession. I know what economists are like, so I’d be very worried, no matter what my algorithm was for selecting someone. Say the people who’ve only been doing operations for three years — should there be a governmental warning label on them the way we put one on cigarettes: “dangerous for your health”? If so, how is it they ever learn?…

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