One clue to a doctor's history can be found at www.dopl.utah.gov. The Web site will tell you if your doctor has licenses to practice medicine and dispense controlled substances; whether those licenses are active, revoked, suspended, surrendered or on probation; and the years when past disciplinary actions occurred. If you pay DOPL $12, you can get some details.

But even if you're savvy enough to investigate your doctor, there are important facts you won't find out.

• You can't find out whether DOPL is currently investigating or negotiating a disciplinary action against your doctor, a process that can take months or even years. While investigation and negotiation continue, a doctor is usually allowed to keep working.

• You can't find out if your doctor was ever in a confidential treatment program for drug or alcohol abuse, or is in treatment now while he continues to practice. Even if DOPL once issued an emergency suspension of your doctor's license, if he then went into the confidential drug program the disciplinary action will not be listed on the Web site.

• You can't find out whether a hospital has ever disciplined your doctor. You cannot find out whether a hospital wanted to discipline your doctor but backed down because it feared your doctor would sue. Hospital information is not available to the public, although it occasionally surfaces in a lawsuit if the doctor does sue the hospital.

• You can't find out whether your doctor did poorly during his training, perhaps being shuttled from one residency to another. Medical school and residency programs operate on confidentiality — even DOPL isn't privy to this. A doctor interviewed for this story tells this joke: "What do you call the person who graduated last in his class in medical school? Doctor."

• You can't find out how many malpractice lawsuits your doctor has settled. Like hospital disciplinary actions, malpractice settlements must be reported to the National Practitioners Data Bank — but the version available to the public does not include names.

• You can't assume doctors on your health insurance provider list have never been disciplined. When the Deseret Morning News cross-checked the names of doctors who have been put on probation by DOPL in the past three years against the "preferred provider" lists of several of Utah's largest health insurance companies, nearly all the disciplined doctors had made at least one of the go-to lists.

• You can't pick every doctor who will care for you. Patients don't select an anesthesiologist, an emergency room doctor, the after-hours-clinic crew. There's no way to look them up in advance.