Doctors

Turn the tables on your doctors: Do a checkup on them before they conduct one on you. Armed with an Internet connection, you can make sure the medical professionals you're seeing - or considering - are licensed, find out if they have board certification in their specialties, see quality ratings for the hospitals where they practice, get feedback from their patients and weigh in with your own opinions. It's the wired-age version of asking everyone you know for recommendations. "There's an ever-growing appetite for this information," said Scott Shapiro, a spokesman for HealthGrades (healthgrades.

A Carroll jury has rejected the claims of a Westminster woman who said two local surgeons caused her to develop multiple personalities after they performed a mastectomy on her in 1989.After deliberating for less than two hours late Monday, the panel of five women and one man found in favor of Dr. Donald D. Coker and Dr. John E. Steers, who had been sued for $1.5 million by Linda Burt, 47, of Westminster."This suit was devastating to them," Susan Boyce, the doctors' lawyer, said yesterday.

DAYTON, Ohio -- The day started for Dr. LeRoy Carhart at 4:30 a.m., when he awoke in his Bellevue, Neb., home, pulled on his cowboy boots and tore to the Omaha airport for a flight to Pittsburgh via St. Louis. It ended at 1:45 a.m., when he finally got to sleep in a Dayton hotel.In between, in six hours in a Pittsburgh clinic, Dr. Carhart performed 17 abortions. Over the next two days in Dayton, still in his boots, he would perform 21 more.Dr. Carhart is an abortion "circuit rider," a new breed of medical specialist that has evolved as anti-abortion groups escalate theirpersonal attacks on doctors -- convincing many that the work is not worth the chanting pickets outside their homes, the threatening letters, the fear of being shot.

Three fired Shock Trauma Center doctors temporarily dropped an effort to get a judge to reinstate them today. Lawyers for the physicians and their boss, Dr. Kimball I. Maull, said they were trying to negotiate a settlement.After meeting with lawyers for both sides, Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Hilary D. Caplan announced the hearing was postponed "in the hopes it will be resolved in a form that's comfortable for all."Neither Edward J. Gutman, a lawyer for the fired doctors, nor William Howard, an attorney representing Dr. Maull, would discuss the negotiations.

Doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital removed a bullet yesterday from the head of 4-year-old Quantae Maurice Johnson, who was struck by a stray shot in the dining room of his grandmother's East Baltimore home 10 days ago.The pre-schooler was in stable condition last night and could be released from the hospital in two weeks, a hospital spokeswoman said. The bullet was turned over to police, she said.

Update : Carver said this afternoon that 50 total employees would lose their jobs, including 10 to 15 doctors and midwives. They could get jobs at other UMMS facilities, including other positions at Maryland General.  The obstetrics unit at Maryland General will close June 30th displacing 10 to 15 doctors and midwives. The news was first reported in the Baltimore Business Journal. The University of Maryland Medical System, which owns Maryland General, made the decision to stop the services because of a declining number of deliveries at the hospital, said spokeswoman Mary Lynn Carver.

Tensions at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center boiled anew as University of Maryland officials yesterday accused 34 doctors of pocketing $2.5 million in patient-care fees and threatened legal action unless the money is returned by Friday.Dr. Errol L. Reese, president of the University of Maryland at Baltimore, said that the university had received "over 50 percent" of the money as of noon and that he was confident that the remainder will appear by the end of the week.But he said that Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. is prepared to take individual doctors or their fee-collecting corporation -- Shock Trauma Associates Professional Association (STAPA)

After watching every second of the Peabody- and Emmy Award-winning Hopkins 24/7 and Hopkins documentary series from ABC News, I did not think there was anything that TV had left to tell me about the making of and professional lives of medical doctors. But after seeing the final installment of Nova's 21-year project, Doctors' Diaries, which premieres Tuesday night at 8 on MPT (Channels 22 and 67), I now know I was wrong. It is not that producer-director Michael Barnes finds new emotions, themes or narratives that ABC's Terry Wrong didn't in his brilliant studies of Hopkins and its doctors.

In an unprecedented move by the state's largest insurer, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Maryland plans to slash fees it pays most physician specialists by as much as 25 percent, enraging doctors and raising questions about the impact on consumers."

Trying to build a bigger niche in the Baltimore medical marketplace, the largest independent group of primary-care doctors in the area announced yesterday that it has secured a $5 million capital commitment from St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson.Baltimore Medical Group, which has 23 doctors in 16 offices, hopes to expand to 100 doctors. The group has formed a new management company, Doctors Health System, in which St. Joseph will hold a minority interest.St. Joseph believes the investment will be profitable from an equity standpoint and help it secure a continuing source of patients, said John Ellis, chief financial officer.