Is there a way to find out which docs are considered best/most experienced in particular hospitals?

There is a book published every year called the best doctors, listed by specialty, and nominated by their peers. But this is so mono dimensional in approach. But this is not as important as being at the best hospital. The best doctors are recruited by the best facilities, where the get the best salaries and have access to the best equipment, grant support mechanisms, and more. The best doctor in head and neck radiology at MDACC is Kian Ang, the department head... I was seen by him and 4 other radiation oncologists who at a weekly meeting review together my case. I would rather have a team, be it multidisciplinary, or in a single specialty decide and monitor everything for me than just one person, who has lots of patients to keep track of besides me. The odds of something falling through the cracks when you have this many people involved with you are slim. Best hospital would be my choice every time. Now given that, you may not get to choose your doctor at any given facility.

ok, so if I am seen e.g. in in City of Hope, should I just let them assign whichever doc or should I try to find out and pick someone specific.

What about the person who performs the surgery. Is that a team effort or one person actually performs it while others are watching.

Are residents ok also?

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

You are nit picking this too much. Get into the system where you want to go. In any major center like City of Hope you are not going to get a resident working by himself...I just doesn't happen that way. If they assign you to a lead doctor and you don't hit it off with him, or are not happy with him for some reason you can request a change. But you shouldn't start out by trying to figure out who is the best - you don't have a decent mechanism for figuring that out, or doing too much second guessing him as a lay person. These places are not staffed with idiots. Right now you should focus on getting into a quality facility and getting started, and forget about this individual doctor direction that you are dealing with. Your early posts indicated you have no insurance and money was an issue. You would be lucky to be treated by any of these institutions, given that many find ways of turning away those that come without a manner of payment. You first job is to find someone that will take you as an institution. The rest of this is a mental exercise right now that is not moving you forward into treatment.