5280 Magazine – August 2019

AUGUST 2019 | 5280 | (^85)
WHO DECIDES?
Frequently asked questions about the Top Doctors selection process.
Why didn’t you choose my doctor?
»^ We don’t pick the docs—Denver
physicians do. For the past 26 years,
5280 has surveyed doctors and asked
them, specialty by specialty, which
metro-area physicians they would
trust to treat themselves and their
families. Our theory is that medi-
cal professionals are best qualified to
judge other medical professionals. The
ballot is posted on 5280.com from
the end of January to mid-March
each year. Every metro-area doctor
with a valid Colorado medical license
can fill it out. Once the doctor hits
“save,” the votes are entered into our
database and tallied.
So doesn’t that make it one big
popularity contest?
»^ In many respects, yes. We hope
that doctors give us careful, respon-
sible answers, but there’s little we can
do to stop them from recommending
their skiing buddies. Using the list
is a lot like going to your doctor and
asking for a referral. The difference is
we’re asking a lot more doctors than
you’d ever have the chance to. Also,
by working to raise our return rate
each year (it was 17 percent this year),
we hope to correct for politics. The
more doctors who participate, the less
chance that any one person’s aspira-
tions will win out.
I thought my doc was a good phy-
sician, but she’s not on the list.
What does that mean?
»^ Nothing. She probably is a good
doctor. The selection of doctors by
peer review can leave many excellent
doctors off the list. Because longtime,
well-known doctors have the advan-
tage of name recognition, the list may
favor that kind of doctor. However,
that in no way means your doctor isn’t
qualified and completely competent.
I’m a doctor, and I couldn’t access
the online ballot. Why?
»^ We get the database of all licensed
physicians in the state from the
Colorado Department of Regulatory
Agencies and select the doctors
located in the seven metro-area coun-
ties (Denver, Arapahoe, Broomfield,
Boulder, Adams, Douglas, and Jef-
ferson), which results in a list of more
than 11,200 docs.
»^ If you attempted to log on to
the system and received a pop-up
response that said, “Login failed,
please check your name and license
number,” that means there is a dis-
connect between your information
and the information we have in the
system. If you’ve recently moved to
Colorado and haven’t updated your
publicly available address with the
Colorado Department of Regulatory
Agencies, for example, your license
will not register as local and there-
fore will be invalid in our system. If
you have registered your license at an
address outside the seven metro-area
counties, you will not be in our data-
base. If you have a hard-to-spell last
name or if you’ve recently changed
your name, it’s possible the infor-
mation we have from the state is
incorrect and you will have trouble
logging in.
»^ In the future, if you have difficulty
logging in to our system, please use
the “comment” tool on the ballot site
and let us know. We’re happy to work
through the problem so you can vote.
I’ve heard the list is rigged—that
only doctors who advertise with
5280 make it. Is that true?
»^ Nope. The Top Doctors list is
completely unaffected by which
doctors advertise in the magazine.
Doctors sometimes choose to adver-
tise after they’ve been chosen for the
list, but how much or if and when
doctors choose to advertise are not
taken into consideration. Period.
How does 5280 choose the medi-
cal specialties on the list?
»^ Through the years we’ve worked
to improve Top Doctors by updating
the categories, increasing the number
of eligible voters, and considering
suggestions from health care profes-
sionals. For the better part of two
decades, our categories have included
only specialties approved by the
American Board of Medical Spe-
cialties (although we do not include
every ABMS specialty). This system
for choosing categories eases confu-
sion among doctors filling out the
survey and reduces the amount of
lobbying we get from doctors and
hospitals that would like us to include
more obscure specialties.
So why aren’t categories such as
chiropractic and podiatry ever
included in the list?
»^ Although these areas of medicine
are completely relevant, respectable,
and necessary, our list is a physician-
only (M.D.s and D.O.s) directory.
Does 5280 check out all the
doctors on the list?
»^ The magazine’s research depart-
ment independently verifies every
doctor’s name, phone number, office
address, and hospital affiliations. We
also take the additional step of sending
our list to the Colorado Department
of Regulatory Agencies for approval—
meaning doctors on our list do not
currently have disciplinary actions
against their licenses and have not
experienced a malpractice suit and/or
settlement in at least five years.
The magazine sometimes chooses
doctors to be profiled or to serve
as sources for the accompanying
story. How are they chosen?
»^5280 sometimes likes to introduce
you to some of our Top Docs through
profiles or by using them to explain
different aspects of medicine. We
believe this is a great way to show our
readers that these physicians are not
just names on a list. In choosing doc-
tors to include, we do our best to vary
the medical specialties represented
and introduce you to doctors we have
never included before. Of course,
sometimes our stories involve doctors
who are not on the list as well.