Inside doctors' prescribing habits

Your doctor hands you a prescription for a blood pressure drug. But is it the right one for you? You're searching for a new primary-care physician or a specialist. Is there a way you can know whether the doctor is more partial to expensive, brand-name drugs than his peers? Or say you've got to find a nursing home for a loved one. Wouldn't you want to know whether the staff doctor regularly prescribes drugs known to be risky for seniors or overuses psychiatric drugs to sedate residents? For most of us, evaluating a doctor's prescribing habits is just about impossible.