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I've used Health First Physicians on S. Mason Montgomery Rd for years - the entire group has been great and have zero complaints. Personally I would recommend Dr. Peerless but I don't think she's taking new patients but highly recommend any of the others within the group. (513) 38-3445 is their #.

Find as many 'A' level medical people, without regard to specialty, and get their recommendation(s) for a primary care doctors - those primary care doctors don't have to take new patients - ask these primary care doctors who they recommend who is taking new patients.Now you have some names, check that they have admitting privileges at the hospitals you might need or use.Why this works - all the 'A' level people tend to know and recommend each other.Okay, don't know any medical people in Boston ?How about starting with med students or nurses ?Start with the doctors your smarter, better organized friends use.Okay, what are the failure modes for this method ?The first one is start from your not so smart friends who don't know squat and have no judgement, or they are in an insurance plan that doesn't pay for the good doctors. Then you go in circles among the less than great.The second problem is you start to get referrals that start to be based social connections instead of performance and ability. This has two consequences, overvaluing social connections and skewing results towards older people.Boston is snobbier than Palo Alto, and you can end up being referred to a bunch of people who play golf together, or where in the same fraternity at school.So after the referral, politely ask how the referrer knows the person they are sending you to. If they knew her from school, and she's bright, or my wife goes to her, that's good.The other part of the multiple referral problem is you may start to get mostly recommendations for older, established doctors, and excluded the younger ones.Toward the end, you should have 3 -5 possibilities. That's a small number, but you should see some diversity - maybe one or two from the US, one from India, one from Canada, a mix of male and female, etc.So some times you can use diversity as a very rough proxy for a meritorious selection process.Be very careful with this, sometimes specialties and groups are aligned, best example of this I know of are the large number of Asian - Americans in anesthesiology.If they are all from the same place, maybe they are just golfing buddies....

A single-payer system in America will not be magically wonderful. It will definitely be more egalitarian but access and choice will be significantly restricted.The single-payer would be the American government. If it's Medicare For All, that's not remotely financially sustainable for hospitals and doctors.Today, America essentially has a 3 tiered health system, with exceptions.At the top are those Americans who have employer provided PPO. They generally have the most access and choice. Second are those who have Medicare. In the third tier are the Medicaid patients and those who have very restricted high deductible PPO plans provided through the ACA exchanges (with the Medicaid patients having the worst options).The deficiencies of Medicare is that the payments are too low. No hospital or physician group can sustain their current level of care on Medicare reimbursement alone. That they can take care of Medicare patients relies on the much higher reimbursement from the employer PPO plans.Every physician practice has restrictions on number of Medicare patients. Many primary care physicians in affluent areas like Manhattan, West Los Angeles and the SF Bay Area are only seeing Medicare patients as part of a concierge practice where patients pay $2500 or more each year for access, not for the care, but for access. And those physicians still bill Medicare for treatment.The real struggle is for patients on Medicaid and the individually purchased ACA PPO plans. The networks are very narrow and it's tough to get appointments with both primary care physicians and specialists, often having to travel to another community.Under single-payer, America would have a one tiered system. The very top 0.25% would still pick and choose their physicians and hospitals because they will pay cash for services. Experts pretty much agree that everyone else would have a version of the medical care provided in the UK or Canada. The good thing about that is universal coverage. The bad thing is limited access to specialty care and rationing.Will most Americans accept rationing and restriction in care? In decades of practice in America, I've not seen any evidence of that. Americans have always wanted, for better or worse, the latest and greatest, and they want it today.At first, single-payer will be fine because America has an incredible medical infrastructure with the absolute latest and most expensive technology in almost every community. Virtually every hospital has multiple CT scanners, a PET, at least one MRI, and robotic surgery unit(s), the many have these incredibly expensive radiation therapy machines that can perform pinpoint stereotactic treatments.One care argue whether all that technology in America is necessary but eventually it will go away because the one thing about national healthcare is that the budgets become over stretched and there is never enough money for new technology. The UK and Canadian systems are chronically under budgeted now. It takes years to budget for technology updates, and more years to purchase and install.About 15 years ago, someone at a conference showed a map of MRI units in California and a map of MRIs in Canada. There were dots all over the state (it looked like fast food restaurants) and giant dots in the big California cities while many Canadian provinces had only 2-3 MRIs. An emergency MRI can be obtained within hours in America. In Canada and the UK it could take weeks to months or not at all.In the UK and Canada, there are long waiting lists for tests like MRI, CT and PET. Highly specialized care and a lot of high end stuff either isn't available or severely restricted.Frequent examples often put forth are the waiting lists for elective hip replacement and spine surgery in Canada, and the deficiencies of cancer treatment and access to surgical specialists in the UK.In Canada patients with hip and spine problems are put on waiting lists for consultation with specialists in joint replacement or spine surgery, waiting lists for MRI, and then waiting lists for surgery. Older and less healthy patients with co-morbities (illnesses) are placed low on the waiting lists, its not first come, first served. (The waiting lists are gamed for physicians and family members.) When the yearly budget runs out, the waiting lists are started from scratch and the older and less healthy patients go back to the bottom. Many of them don't ever get hip and spine surgery unless they fall and break something. Then they get emergency surgical care for the fracture.The UK for decades has the lowest cancer survivor rates in Western Europe. The cancer specialists in the UK know as much about cancer treatment as anyone in the world. They are highly trained, very knowledgeable, and ready and willing. But the UK lacks the infrastructure for top tier cancer care. There is a shortage of sophisticated imaging, a shortage of cancer surgeons, a shortage of modern radiation machines, and a shortage of high end cancer drugs. Many cancer treatments commonly available in America are either unavailable in the UK or are given by lottery until the budget runs out.A simple example is the difficulty for many years that breast cancer and ovarian cancer patients in the UK experienced in getting genetic testing for BRCA because Myriad Genetics charged $4,000 per test and the NHS wouldn't pay for it. I had family members of patients who were BRCA carriers who were denied that test in the UK. And what about the newer molecular cancer tests to guide treatment? Good luck.For those who wish for single-payer in America, another caution should be the VA health system of waiting lists and delays and even complete lack of service. Very few Americans are envious of the care provided by the VA system.America definitely needs to reduce the cost of medical care and also reduce unnecessary care. But single-payer is not magic.Long Canadian wait times send patients south for surgery | VideoCanadian health care wait times highest for orthopaedic surgery proceduresHospital wait times pushing Albertans to leave Canada for back surgery | Metro NewsCancer survival rates in UK are a 'shameful' decade behind Europe 25 cancer drugs to be denied on NHS Postcode lottery in cancer diagnosis is costing up to 10,000 lives a year Pancreatic cancer drug 'postcode lottery' - BBC NewsPatients in Wales being refused test for cancer gene - BBC News'Thousands' Denied Life-Extending Cancer TestsNHS accused of age discrimination over lifesaving surgeryGPs say NHS is ageist3 Reasons Why There's No Quick Fix for the VA