General Health & Medicine

Websites

AIM DocFinder

This database provides a joint search of 16 states' doctor licensing databases.  AIM DocFinder includes links to the individual licensing websites for the states not participating in the joint search.

AMA DoctorFinder

The American Medical Association DoctorFinder includes more than 814,000 licensed physicians in the U.S., including doctors of osteopathy (DO). However, AMA DoctorFinder requires users to enter a state (or a zip code) to perform a search and the entries for non-AMA members are extremely limited.  Some of the members’ online entries include office hours and a practice philosophy statement.

America's Best Hospitals

Updated annually, this site from U.S. News and World Report ranks adult hospitals in sixteen specialties. Children's hospitals are ranked in ten specialties. One can browse rankings by medical specialty or search by specialty and/or location. There is also a section on the best hospital for 5 procedures.

Hospital Compare

From Medicare, this site gives you information on how well specific hospitals compare with national averages. Areas in which hospitals are compared include:

• How often and quickly each hospital gives recommended treatments for certain conditions like heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, children’s asthma, stroke, and blood clots, and follows best practices to prevent surgical complications.
• How likely patients will suffer from complications while in the hospital or after having certain inpatient surgical procedures.
• How often patients in the hospital get certain serious conditions that could have been prevented.
• How each hospital’s performance on readmissions and deaths compares to the national rate. 

Maryland Board of Physicians Practitioner Profile System

This database is from the state agency responsible for licensing physicians in Maryland. The entries include educational and certification information. The entries also contain limited information about disciplinary actions by medical boards as well as malpractice judgments and settlements.

MedlinePlus

MedlinePlus is a site developed by the National Library of Medicine to help consumers locate high quality health information online. It organizes selected links about more than 975 diseases and conditions. Updated daily, there are also links to drug information, directories, news, organizations and an encyclopedia. This is the best consumer health site on the Web.

Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary on MedlinePlus

This online medical dictionary allows you to use a wildcard character to help you look up words when you aren’t sure how to spell them or when you need to look up a partial word. If you misspell the word you are trying to look up, the program will automatically display a list of words that sound like or that are spelled similarly to the word you typed. If you aren't sure how to spell a word, try spelling it the way it sounds. The spelling help feature will look for words that sound like one you have typed.

Nursing Home Compare

This U.S. government database has detailed information about every Medicare and Medicaid-certified nursing home in the country.

Databases

Maintained by the staff of the Business, Science & Technology Department, State Library Resource Center, Enoch Pratt Free Library