DocPicks draws on two layers of information, and we keep them clearly separate.
Official CMSA accreditation data is reproduced exactly as published by the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa — nothing here is altered or interpreted by us.
Service exposure is independently researched from public sources: provincial Department of Health facility listings, community-service and internship doctor review and directory sites, medical directories, university health-faculty pages, and credible South African journalism and oversight reporting. Where our research points to a specific answer, we look for at least two independent sources before treating it as reliable — a single source gets a lower confidence rating rather than being presented as settled fact.
Lifestyle factors are researched separately, using sources suited to what they measure: drive times and travel distances, retail and amenity presence, rental listings for the going rate in each town, and parks, trails and coastline for outdoor access. The same two-source standard applies — a single source gets a lower confidence rating rather than being presented as settled fact.
Confidence ratings are shown throughout the tool, not just on this page. For personalised (Pro) users, each researched service shows its own confidence level, where one has been recorded.
We don't publish a running bibliography of every source per hospital. The underlying research changes as facilities change and as we correct errors, so a static list would go stale almost immediately — and the detailed sourcing is already surfaced per-hospital, in context, for personalised users, which is more useful than a separate reference list. What we do commit to: every rating you see reflects real research, done in good faith, and every correction you report gets checked and applied.
Found something that doesn't match what you know to be true? Tell us at hello@docpicks.com — we investigate every report.