I agree with Brian about choosing the hospital and I would add maybe a "group" of doctors. As with my husband we found him an ENT who was a Baylor doc and all of his subsequent recommendations were Baylor docs.

We have since made it a habit that whenever we are in need of a certain kind of doc we just call Baylor.

There is nothing wrong with them "assigning" you to a specific doc but make sure that once you meet him/her that you are comfortable with the decision. If not then ask for another recommendation. Remember that you will be seeing a lot of this doc and you will be placing your life in his/her hands so you should feel that you have made the right choice.

When my husband's doc recommended Methodist Hospital we were a little awkward about it because we didn't know much about cancer treatments other than we have MD Anderson here. It was our natural inclination to want to choose MDACC but the ENT said something to us that made us understand the value of a Comprehensive Cancer Center....

He told us that he has trained many of the docs at MDACC and that he still trains the majority of them as they all attend the same Grand Rounds, etc. So as long as you are in a major medical center or CCC then you can rest assured that all of the docs that practice there are interacting with each other in their defined specialties and they all have a "goto" doc in case they need advice. Usually the goto doc is the top gun and the advice is current and state of the art.

While bedside manner is always important, sometimes knowing that your doc has all of the tools and experience to save your life can be reassuring enough.

Let us know how it goes.

All the Best,
Cindy