STAT+: The federal directory of doctors and hospitals is coming this year
After years of grand ambitions, the federal government disclosed that it is months away from rolling out a centralized list of doctors and hospitals filled with up-to-date contact and insurance information.
Details of how the national provider directory will work are scant — federal officials buried the development in a document intended for health insurance companies. The directory will be in a testing phase to start.
Government officials and health care policy experts have called for fixes to error-prone provider directories for more than a decade. Patients have craved a solution after years of encountering lists that are often filled with inaccuracies, most notably whether doctors participate in an insurance plan’s network.
Bob Herman
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