Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Website Spotlight: YourCity.MD

Finding a physician for you and your family these days is critical, and since physician credentialing in the U.S. is only required once every two or three years, many improperly or unlicensed physicians go undetected for long periods of time – leaving you at risk for medical errors.  Medical errors are already responsible for the deaths of 98,000 Americans each year.

In order to help Americans’ connect with reputable doctors, top-quality health and medical information and reliable physician reviews, Joe Benza decided to create YourCity.MD
I had an opportunity to intervew Joseph Benza, founder and CEO, YourCity.MD.

1) What was the inspiration behind creating YourCity.MD? 
The inspiration for YourCity.MD came from the untimely death of my very healthy and fit father, who contracted Parkinson's and took a drug that had a side effect of leukemia.  Many drugs have extremely severe side effects for a small percentage of people that take them, so the risk reward to take any drug needs to be weighed seriously by every family for any drug you place in your body.  Most of my family is in healthcare and yet none of us researched the side effects of Dad's drugs because we knew we were lucky enough to be in the healthcare field and have the knowledge to select the very best doctors to care for my father.  Dad did get Leukemia in a matter of months and passed away just 3 months after diagnosis.  I wanted a "Local" trustworthy website in every community, where anyone could get the best information available to make the best healthcare decisions for their family for free so no-one else would have to go through the loss and second guessing of their actions or inaction's that my family had to go through with the unnecessary passing of my hero.

2) How does it work?
We aggregate the best vetted (doctor approved) data and multiple resources to offer to our viewers.  Our technical staff created 3 search engines to make it easy for users to use and all are free to everyone.  The On-Click Search Engine is a patent pending search engine that saves the user hours when searching for everything they need in any city with simply one click.  Example: If you type in cancer, we will tell you who the best Oncologists are in your community to treat your cancer.  Likewise on the same page we show you all 5 primary care type doctors to give you a referral to the Oncologists, the articles and videos you need on cancer, the hospitals and pharmacies with complete listings addresses and telephone numbers for each so you do not ever need to search Google or Yahoo or any Global site that has inaccurate and time wasting websites that confuse most people.

We urge users in every city to simply rate their doctors so everyone in the community shares great data and we can all learn about the doctors, dentists and all healthcare professionals and can choose the best in our own local community.  We also allow doctors to post open appointments in our new Dr. Now search for free just in case you have an immediate need for a particular specialist and can't get into your doctor for days.

Basically we are "The" One-Stop Shop for consumer healthcare and all our knowledge based services will always be free to help the public.

3) What are some tips you can share for finding quality healthcare professionals?
I highly recommend using the local .MD city/community website in your area to search the ratings of the available doctors. (Go to either http://www.yourcity.md/ and put in your zip-code just once then choose your .MD city or go to www.MyCity.MD  to see our list of cities and use it from now forward).  Make the .MD ratings a discussion in all your groups, Facebook and Twitter and ask Mom's to start a campaign to rate the true effectiveness of every doctor, dentist, etc that you visit and do it asap.  The more information we share the better information we have when caring for our loved ones.  You should know that we are leading the charge to get hospitals and insurance companies to release to the public the TRUE outcome results for patients based on their doctors ability to perform surgery and other procedures which they keep secret for no Good Reason! Ask Moms across the country to tell their friends asap to rate their doctors today on a www.YourCity.MD website.

4) What should people do if they have concerns about their healthcare professional?
You look for a great landscaper or carpenter when you need one, why aren't you doing as much research to find the best doctors to keep your family healthy?  Doctors, Dentists etc provide a service just like any service and you should demand the best you can get. The first thing they should do if they have concerns with their current healthcare professional is confront them with the concerns and see if they will address your issues in a satisfactory way. Then regardless of the outcome, rate the doctor (Good or Bad) on a .MD website and lave a comment for others to see, so everyone is made aware of what you know.  You can now become the person who helps others from going through the same bad experience you did or help direct them to the doctor that turned a bad situation into a good one.  YourCity.MD community websites helps formalize patient word of mouth ratings and feedback.  The more ratings the more accurate the feedback.  If you do your part perhaps others will do the same which will help you immensely when you need the help!

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