In 2023, I moved from Massachusetts/Connecticut to Washington, DC, leaving my trusted care network behind. Even though I lived in western Massachusetts, I always had excellent doctors and rarely needed to travel to Boston’s big hospitals.
I assumed DC—our nation’s capital—would be at least as good. It wasn’t.
In the DMV area, there are really only two options:
- Expensive concierge medicine, or
- Picking a random name from your insurance list and crossing your fingers.
I tried both.
Concierge care was nice but cost more than my insurance premiums on top of still having copays. So I switched to the usual route: go to my insurance website, choose a name, wait weeks for an appointment, and hope I got lucky.
Since I’d had great experiences at teaching hospitals before, I picked (name redacted) University. Big mistake. It actually made me worry about what they’re teaching the students there. I had providers ready to write prescriptions before asking about my history. One vascular surgeon told me “medicine doesn’t know what causes high blood pressure” and meds are the only choice. My endocrinologist said elevated insulin levels “don’t matter.” Just disappointing, especially in our capital city.
After too many pill-pushing mega-clinics, I turned to xAI’s Grok for help finding a qualified provider who:
- was accepting new patients
- took my insurance
- and, most importantly, would let me direct my own care.
Older AI models always missed something and gave useless suggestions. Grok is different. It can take my insurance provider list, cross-reference it with my specific needs, pull reviews from multiple sites, and summarize everything in a short, clear paragraph. That saves hours of research and decision fatigue.
Here are the tips that worked for me:
- Start narrow on your insurance website (gender, specialty, accepting new patients). Get the shortest list you can. Share it with Grok as a link if possible, or upload a PDF screenshot if the link doesn’t work.
- Be very specific with Grok. Who needs care, what kind of care, health goals, and the personality/style of doctor you want. The more detail, the better the match.
- Always ask follow-up questions. Challenge the first suggestions. Make Grok dig deeper or explain weak spots.
- Never fully trust AI on something this important. Double-check everything: read some of the actual reviews yourself and confirm the doctor is still in-network.
- When picking from the shortlist, look at how easy it is to book and how many openings they show. Super-popular doctors rarely have same-month slots. Lots of openings can mean you’ll mostly see a nurse practitioner or PA. That’s fine with me—they usually spend more time, take a real history, and can loop in the MD when needed.
- If the first visit feels off, move on. There’s no prize for sticking with a bad fit.
Feel free to try this yourself on your AI model of choice and reply back in the comments with your results.
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