Get a referral. Try to avoid picking a doctor at random from your health plan’s list or out of the phone book. In our survey, people who found their physicians through someone they trusted--a friend, a family member, or another doctor--had the most favorable experiences. (We found a similar phenomenon in a 2004 survey of consumers who visited mental-health professionals.)

If you’re picking a doctor to care for a specific condition, ask about how often he or she treats cases similar to yours. Patients we surveyed who took this step were more satisfied with their care. You can also ask the doctor about specialty board certification, which requires advanced training and the passing of rigorous tests. See Checking on your doctor for more on checking up on a doctor’s qualifications.

Research carefully. The Internet has given consumers almost limitless sources of information on their medical conditions. But 41 percent of doctors said their patients often showed up poorly informed because of bad information found online. If you research your condition online, as almost 40 percent of respondents did, take care to assess the site’s credibility before relying on its information. Two free sites you can trust: MayoClinic.com (www.mayoclinic.com) and the National Institutes of Health (www.nih.gov). Both rated excellent for reliability and quality of information in a review by Consumer Reports WebWatch, a project of Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of this magazine, and the Health Improvement Institute. (For more help with evaluating health Web sites, go to www.healthratings.org.)

But don’t bring reams of printouts to your appointment, because the doctor won’t have time to read them. Instead, highlight pertinent sections, such as a summary of a new drug or treatment you want to discuss or a diagnostic test the doctor hadn’t mentioned.

If something about your diagnosis or treatment remains unclear at the end of your appointment, ask the doctor to suggest sources for more information.

Prepare an agenda. The average patient gets 10 to 20 minutes with the doctor, according to national physician surveys and direct studies of patient visits. More than half of the doctors we surveyed said they had to see many more patients now than they did five years ago to maintain the same income and that on some days they saw too many patients to spend adequate time with each. (Patients might not be aware of that fact; only 9 percent of our respondents said they felt rushed through their visit.)

Deciding ahead of time which things you most need to discuss can make the most of your limited time. Almost half of our readers brought a written list of questions and concerns to their doctor visits. Prioritize the three or four issues you most want to talk about, and bring those up first. If you don’t have time to get through the whole list, ask whether you can follow up with e-mail. A survey by the Center for Studying Health System Change found that 24 percent of U.S. doctors now exchange e-mail with patients.