How We Find our Doctors: The Grand Rounds Quality Algorithm

Grand Rounds approaches the problem of finding great doctors in a highly unique way. We’re a healthcare company, but we’re also a technology company. And how we leverage technology makes a tremendous difference in how we answer the question, “Which doctors are truly leaders in their fields?”

We have over 1,000 doctors in our Expert Panel, the ones who review patient cases and return Expert Opinions. What’s more, we have several thousand doctors to whom we can potentially send patients when they need to visit a doctor in-person.

How did we find all these doctors? They are not:

• Friends of our Staff Physicians
• A bunch of names we found in a database
• A data dump from various media articles that list good doctors

Rather, we found them through our proprietary Quality Algorithm.

Think about doing a Google search for “umbrellas.” The Page One results you get will represent what Google thinks are the most highly valued sites that discuss umbrellas — the ones with the best content, the most traffic, and the most referring links.

Similarly, the Grand Rounds quality algorithm performs a quality ranking of doctors. We look at a variety of factors — not all of which we can disclose, but some of which include the doctor’s training, publication history, current institution, and patient outcomes.

That’s how we know that Dr. E. David Crawford is not just a specialist in prostate cancer, but one of the country’s leading experts — and that he can produce better outcomes in his area of specialty than almost any other physician.

We use our quality algorithm every time a patient starts a case with us. We’re able to find exactly the right doctor for what that patient needs, and come as close as possible to guaranteeing that the patient receives the highest possible quality of care.

Outside of our algorithm, there’s no existing mechanism for the ordinary person to find great doctors — unless they’re lucky enough to be a medical insider and actually know the right people to contact. Google won’t work. Yelp is a deathtrap. Don’t get us started on Healthgrades.

The Grand Rounds quality algorithm makes everyone a medical insider. It ensures that our patients don’t select a doctor based on blind faith, but instead benefit from leading-edge technology to get access to world-class care.