University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: July 17, 2003

By DONNA LONGENECKER
Reporter Assistant Editor

Finding a physician can be stressful, especially during a medical crisis, and brings up a host of questions: Is he/she board certified? Can I easily locate the office? What are the office hours? Will I be covered under my health plan?

Locating all of this information in one place is a long shot, and print directories provided by health-insurance providers quickly become outdated.

With almost 500 UB physicians practicing in more than 17 primary and specialty-care areas, choosing a university-associated doctor may seem like a daunting task. But now it's been made much easier, thanks to the "Find-a-UB-Physician" Web site http://www.smbs.buffalo.edu/find-a-physician/fad_about.htm developed last fall by the Office of Medical Computing in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

The well-organized, easy-to-navigate site serves as a one-stop gateway to the largest group of physicians in Western New York, allowing users to search online for a doctor or specialist while at the same time making it easier for UB physicians to refer patients to each other when the need arises for a specialist.

Ray Dannenhoffer, director of the Office of Medical Computing in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, says that once it became clear there was no central repository listing UB medical clinicians and faculty, his office addressed the problem by creating a print directory and later, by developing a Web site.

"They (UB physicians) are spread out among multiple clinical sites and it was hard for faculty to know who each other was—they weren't just running into each other in the cafeteria or in the hallway," says Dannenhoffer. At the same time, creating the Web site was a natural outgrowth of developing the print directory and became a way to increase the quality of patient care and education by allowing faculty members to more easily find and refer their patients to their UB colleagues, he says.

UB physicians are in fact, as Dannenhoffer asserts, the largest medical group in Western New York, but, he points out, nobody really knows it.

"The Web site is one way to get the word out about the breadth and depth of the exceptional quality of UB's medical care," thus shedding light on one of Western New York's unintentionally best-kept secrets, he says.

"There has been a deficit in the community's awareness that UB's physicians are a resource they can use."

Pat DiNicola, assistant vice president and chief operating officer in the Office of the Vice President for Health Affairs, echoes that concern.

"I'd always see information out there (in the media) about other major medical groups in the area, but nothing about UB's medical group. We've never had our name out there. We were never recognized in the community as a resource, so we decided it was best, based on our discussions with physicians, to develop a print directory."

Developing a more comprehensive, in-depth, online database, is, as DiNicola sees it, part of the process of putting an umbrella over the vast and widely dispersed group of university physicians.

"It's important to try to treat us as a single, multi-specialty unit—it's important to get as much information about the UB family of physicians out there in the community as possible," DiNicola says, noting that "it's the first step in a cultural change in how we run our practice plan."

Using the site to search for a physician is simple—it can be searched by name, expertise and specialty, such as adolescent medicine; by which insurance plans are accepted by the medical-service provider, and even by zip code.

Once a search is completed, the user finds an abundance of information on the physician's individual Web page, such as the address of his/her office, phone numbers, information about the type of practice or specialty and, to save time, a link to Mapquest Web site that automatically shows the location of the office or medical building in which the doctor is located.

The handy, single-page Patient's Guide covers how to request an appointment, what to do before an appointment and what the patient should bring to the first visit with the physician. It also covers payment and insurance information.

A unique function of the site is its linkage, or live feed, to an electronic curriculum vitae tool that allows faculty to upload their vitae into an online format that keeps the "Find-a-UB-Physician site up-to-date.

If a faculty member publishes a new article in a professional journal, it will show up automatically on the Web site if the data has been logged in via the electronic CV tool, explains Dannenhoffer. If a physician changes location or specialty, that information also can be easily and quickly updated in a matter of minutes.

In addition, it features a "Find-a-Researcher" link that allows researchers to locate each other and track ongoing research or clinical trials, leading the way for potential collaboration. One day soon, a cancer patient potentially could track clinical trials of particular cancer drugs to follow their progress.

Both DiNicola and Dannenhoffer say the response to the Web site has been overwhelmingly positive and ideally will help to foster collaboration and physician referrals while better acquainting the vast group of physicians associated with UB with one another and with the communities they serve.