Doctors On Edge, Waiting To Hear If They're 'Best'

These are anxious, nail-biting days for New York City doctors, as they wait for an influential evaluation of their profession, otherwise known as New York magazine's "Best Doctors" issue.

The issue, which hits newsstands Monday, is the magazine's 11th annual report on 1,440 of the tri-state area's best internists, dermatologists, cardiologists, and other physicians. Based on information from the health care research firm Castle Connolly Medical Ltd., the list is both shunned and embraced by the medical community.

"This is not a happy time for the hospital public affairs people, because doctors think we influence who is on the list, which in fact we don't do," a spokesman for the hospital network Continuum Health Partners, Jim Mandler, said. "The first thing they do is call people like me and complain, 'How come you didn't get me on the list?'"

Mr. Mandler said he knows two physicians who reveled last year when they made the list for the first time. Now, he said, "they're both kind of nervous about whether they're going to be on the list again." He emphasized that both are excellent doctors who are highly credentialed.

Castle Connolly's chief strategy and operations officer, William Liss-Levinson, said the list includes a fraction of the region's doctors. The results are derived from nominations and a systematic vetting process.

At least one Manhattan obstetrician and gynecologist who was featured by New York magazine in previous years, Dr. Sharon Diamond, said she does not know if she will be included this year. Usually, she said, she finds out when her patients call her to congratulate her or to commiserate.

"I wonder who I offended those years, which patients didn't like me, which of my colleagues had a bone to pick," she said jokingly. She said she doesn't take the list too seriously because she knows so many "wonderful" doctors who are not included.

Still, during the month after the magazine publishes the "best doctor" list, Dr. Diamond said her office receives an influx of calls. While she said she never specifically tries to make the list — "The day I need to do that will be the day I hope I retire," she said — her 17-year-old daughter has been known to brag lovingly around town.

"When she was younger, she used to tell people her mother was one of the best doctors in New York," Dr. Diamond said.