Sure- but if you have some rare symptom, any decent family doctor should say “go see a specialist” and refer you. You certainly aren’t going to contact metamed every time you get sick, and for chronic conditions, a specialist (with journal and up-to-date access) is going to be the managing physician. Anything other than routine sniffles, vaccinations and check-ups and you probably have exceeded your family doctor’s expertise.
The big problem for misdiagnosis at the family-med level are the hordes of relatively rare diseases with common symptoms, but this is a very hard problem to solve. Having spent some time dealing with this as a statistical problem, even if you have a rare cluster of common symptoms, its usually the case that you are more likely to have a rare presentation of a common disease than it is that you have a rare disease.
Sure- but if you have some rare symptom, any decent family doctor should say “go see a specialist” and refer you. You certainly aren’t going to contact metamed every time you get sick, and for chronic conditions, a specialist (with journal and up-to-date access) is going to be the managing physician. Anything other than routine sniffles, vaccinations and check-ups and you probably have exceeded your family doctor’s expertise.
The big problem for misdiagnosis at the family-med level are the hordes of relatively rare diseases with common symptoms, but this is a very hard problem to solve. Having spent some time dealing with this as a statistical problem, even if you have a rare cluster of common symptoms, its usually the case that you are more likely to have a rare presentation of a common disease than it is that you have a rare disease.
I think MetaMed is intended to supplement the treatment advice you’d otherwise receive from specialists.