How physicians are listed and ordered

The short version

DocBeat lists primary care physicians (MD and DO) whose records we have checked against public sources, and orders them the way a physician judges a colleague: by training, professional record and how they practise. Nobody can pay to appear, to rank, or to be left out of a fact. There are no star ratings and no reviews.

When we are not sure about a physician, we leave them out rather than publish a caveat. A listing here is a statement that we checked.

Who appears

A physician appears when three things are true: they hold an active licence with the state medical board, they practise primary care (family medicine, internal medicine, general practice, geriatrics or paediatrics) at a location we can place, and the public record supports the facts we would show. Physicians in 17 states are covered today; a state is added only after its board data, licence checks and addresses have all been reconciled.

Physicians who work only in hospitals, physicians whose listed address turns out to be a residence, and physicians whose record we cannot corroborate are held back rather than shown with a warning.

How results are ordered

Every physician is placed in one of three tiers from three things: where and how they trained, their professional record (licence standing, board actions and malpractice history from state and federal records), and their pattern of practice (outpatient primary care, complexity of the patients they see, how the practice is structured). Higher tiers come first.

Within a tier, physicians are equals, and we treat them that way. If you searched near a place or a ZIP code, nearer physicians come first. Otherwise the physicians whose records we have corroborated most fully come first, and the rest appear in an order that changes between visits so that position cannot be read as a rank. Searching a name orders by how well the name matches.

Two things never affect order: money, and whether a practice charges a membership fee. Membership practices carry a marker so you know before you call, and nothing more.

What a profile shows, and where each fact comes from

Name, credentials and specialty: the National Plan and Provider Enumeration System (NPPES), the federal registry every practising physician is in.

Practice address and phone: the practice location in NPPES, checked against state records. Where an address may be a residence, the street is withheld and only the town is shown.

Licence status: the state medical board, refreshed on the board's own schedule. Board actions are shown as a flag with a pointer to the board, never as our summary.

Training and years in practice: medical school and graduation records, reconciled with the board.

Publications: indexed journals, matched to the physician by name and affiliation.

Membership practice (concierge, direct primary care, functional, virtual-first): the practice's own page plus at least one independent source, reviewed by a person. A fee is shown only when the practice states one, with the date we saw it.

Accepting new patients: shown only when verified, with the date. A stale "not accepting" costs a physician patients, so we show nothing rather than guess.

What we leave out on purpose

Star ratings and patient reviews, because they are easy to game and impossible to audit. Advertising and sponsored placement, because the order would no longer be ours. Our own composite scores, because a number invites a precision the evidence does not have. Anything a physician would pay to change.

Who decides

Two practising physicians, the co-founders, sign off on the method, on what counts as primary care, and on every state before it goes live. Changes to the method are recorded on this page with a date. Their names are on the leadership page.

Corrections and removal

Every profile has a "Report inaccurate information" control. A report reaches a person, not a queue. We acknowledge within five business days and correct the record, or explain why we did not, within ten.

If you are the physician: write to hello@docbeat.ai from an address we can connect to your practice, or through your board's contact, and we will correct any fact, withhold your street address, or remove your listing. Removal is honoured; we do not argue a physician into staying. We do not accept requests to change your position in results, because position is not for sale to you either.

Facts we cannot verify after a report are removed rather than left with a note.