The Madison WI OBGYN

Our search for the best OBGYN in Madison, WI was interesting. We were transferring from another country in the last trimester of the pregnancy and we needed a doctor who could quickly get up to speed and possibly fill in the blanks if there are differences in the way medicine was practice between the countries. For most people, finding the best doctor is more like match making and they try to find a doctor they can feel comfortable with. This is a good approach for most people, however, our rationale and methodology for finding the best OBGYN was a bit different. First the rationale for finding the best doctor -- according to Steven Levitt, one of the top researchers who graduated from both Harvard and MIT, the skill level is approximately 10 years difference between a newly graduated doctor from a good school is as skilled as a doctor from an average school with 10 years experience, and in the unlikely event of a life threatening situation, you will have 20% higher chance of surviving if your doctor came from one of the top schools. Considering the our out of pocket cost is the same no matter which doctor we chose, it makes sense to choose the best doctor one can find because the cost is the same but the quality is drastically different (as measured by one's survival chance if something goes wrong).

So our methodology went something like this:

A. Check the ranking of the top medical schools from US News and they were rank as follows:
1. Harvard University
2. University of Pennsylvania
3. Johns Hopkins University

Full ranking is HERE.

B. Check with our insurance company, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, on which hospitals they cover and found out that in Madison, they only cover 2 hospitals (Meriter and UW Health).

C. Next was the check the listing of the doctors in both hospitals and looked at their educational background to see which of the doctors attended the top 3 schools. Our search yielded only one doctor : Cynthia K. Anderson, MD. She completed her medical training at Johns Hopkins University and is now an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin in addition to her practice at Meriter Hospital.

Well, that was the plan. Here is the reality -- it was a bit challenging getting Sarah to be Dr. Anderson's patient because she was in the midst of transfer and wasn't accepting any new patents. However, a combination of pleading and perseverance with the doctor and her administrative staff an arrangement was formed where Dr. Anderson at UW Health would see Sarah until her last two weeks when Dr. Anderson would be transferred to Meriter Hospital. At that point Sarah would still be with UW Health and will see two other doctors as a transition. Sarah would give birth at Meriter Hospital where Dr. Anderson is one of the 5 doctors on duty for the delivery of babies. So, there is a 1/5 chance that Dr. Anderson would deliver the baby. The actual doctor that delivers the baby will depend on who is on duty at the time Sarah goes into labor.

Below is an introductory video of Dr. Cynthia K. Anderson that we watched as part of the evaluation process.



This blog post is dedicated to all the new parents looking for the best doctor in their town. Looking at the statistics of our blog, we realize that one of the highest number of people visiting our website from a google search was searching for the terms "best obgyn" or equivalent and hopefully this post will help them on their journey.