Published: 2009-06-17 00:22:30
Author: Steve Sternberg, Anthony DeBarros and Jack Gillum | USA Today | May 15, 2009
Weitz has helped usher in major changes in how
local paramedics, emergency room staff and heart specialists treat
heart attacks so doctors can clear patients' clogged arteries as
quickly as possible.
His colleagues say that when Weitz talks, people
listen. It's their high regard for him, their tendency to follow his
lead, that distinguishes Weitz as one of the nation's Most Influential
Doctors, a database
Created for USA TODAY by the
Unlike standard best-doctor lists compiled by opinion-based surveys, the Qforma analysis represents a national effort to track subtle differences in doctors' practice patterns that reveal, on a local level, which doctors most influence their peers. The project's goal is to offer consumers an innovative resource during the complex decision of how to choose a doctor.
"I do feel strongly that this is a good tool to give people a place to start," says Qforma's CEO Kelly Myers.
The company's approach exploits a wealth of commercially available information. Unbeknownst to most patients and many physicians, countless details of a doctor's professional activities — from procedures to referrals to prescribing records — are readily available, at a price, to marketers, medical information firms and drug companies.
Qforma carries out its medical analyses primarily for drug firms, which prize such information. Among other things, drug company executives pick influential doctors to sit on advisory boards, identify gaps in treatment that might be filled by new drugs and sway their colleagues to use a company's products, rather than generics or those sold by rivals, says Marcia Harms of the Prescription Project, a Boston-based advocacy group pushing to limit pharma's influence over doctors.
An analysis by Tulikaa Bhatia of
"Even though a guy only writes $25 worth of prescriptions himself, he may influence other people who write $100 worth," Bhatia says.