ABSTRACT
Firstly the paper expounds the fact that letting patients pick their doctors goes with the tide of social development: ①the connotation of medical quality determines the necessity of patients involvement; ②evaluation of medical quality has extended from self appraisal to social assessment; and ③the mechanism of letting patients pick their doctors conforms to the medical quality requirements of the times. Then the paper discusses the positive impact of letting patients pick their doctors on medical quality, including the choice of doctors by outpatients and the impossibility of doing so in medico technical and emergency departments or by inpatients. The paper also gives an account of the measures taken for safeguarding medical quality when adopting the practice of letting patients pick their doctors. Lastly the paper explains the boosting role of the practice and the difference between letting patients pick their doctors and letting them name particular surgeons for their operations.