'Just-In-Time' Provider Directories
By Justin Sims
There are about 800K physicians in the United States and many data sources that contain information about each one: from specialties, to office locations and hospital affiliations, to contact information. While a physician’s specialties rarely change, contact information does—and it changes frequently.
How do you keep it all up to date?
Let’s imagine for a moment the effort to manually update a single national directory: If it takes 10 minutes to contact each physician’s office by phone to verify contact information, it would take 16,667 working days, or roughly 65 full-time staff to complete a cycle of verification once a year. And during that year, roughly 25% of the information would again become outdated. So, while hospitals, payers, ACOs and others are in a race to keep their local or regional databases current, no one can guarantee that contact information is perfect.
It’s time to think differently.
Maintaining a reliable and current directory means making timely updates and leveraging a flexible architecture—while keeping administrative costs low, supporting a variety of workflow requirements, and avoiding unnecessary cycles of updates.
How do we accomplish this? By combining the best of all worlds:
Compile credible data from a vast number of federal and state agencies, as well as trusted sources such as hospitals, payers, and others
Build a scalable infrastructure that handles both individual and bulk updates with ease
Support improved standards that help the industry become more efficient in collecting relevant provider data
Use “live” workflows such as transitions of care or ADT feeds to prioritize directory updates
Queue messages if contact information is questionable and verify it in real-time.
This is exactly what careMESH was built to do: continual automated database updating PLUS just-in-time verification to ensure delivery. Our customers don’t need to do Google searches or make phone calls to find a recipient. They embed the National Provider Directory into their EHR, compose messages and push send—with new peace of mind that messages will be delivered (digitally) and without the overhead of maintaining contact information manually.
Give us a call or drop an email to learn more.
Justin