Despite the shortage of primary care physicians and the pressure many of them are under from insurance companies, I encourage you not to give up on finding great healthcare. It just takes a little work.

If you find a great doctor who is booked for months and doesn’t take new patients, ask her to recommend a new competent physician willing to grow with you and become part of your family.

I don’t recommend using any of the popular websites that are supposed to help you find a doctor. Many of the sites use hospital databases or only list doctors who go to hospitals that advertise.

So you must be smart and make the decision that finding a good doctor for you and your family is at least as important as finding a good plumber.

Word-of-mouth is the best way to find a physician. Your friends likely will have the same interest in doctors as you do, so you probably will find the right doctor by following their advice.

Asking a nurse won’t help. Nurses work in hospitals, so they know who the most popular doctors are in their facilities, but if you are looking for a doctor who does integrative medicine, sickness prevention, and hormones — basically what I offer — these are not doctors who go to hospitals because they don’t take care of acutely ill patients