I've made use of doctor rating sites and medication rating sites. I find them helpful because you're getting a much larger range of input than you might if you merely asked around in your own private social circle.

What you will be reading at those kinds of sites are people's personal experiences of that particular medication, doctor, or occasionally, clinic or hospital -- positive and negative. That doesn't mean that you will have the exact same experience as someone else did. Zyprexa might be a wonderful drug for one person; it might make the next one wish they were dead.

Same with docs -- a person can have a good fit with a doc and the next person might not. If one doctor is consistently getting bad ratings though, that might indicate someone who isn't a very good doc. I did see one such doc on one site (not a pdoc) who was clearly a really horrible doc. There were so many negative comments from patients and former staff as well, about botched surgeries, cattlecar treatments, highly pressured sales, etc.... anyone who read those comments and still thought they should put their health in that doctors hands would be very, very foolish.