The NPPES Database

 

The CMS.GOV NPPES data is the de-facto standard for information about National Provider Identities (NPI's) and the healthcare provider associated with the NPI.

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Every month, around the 10th, CMS.GOV publishes a new export of their NPPES database containing the most current healthcare provider data. Newly issued NPI's are included, as are changes of address, the addition of newly earned taxonomy codes and other data - all updated to the most current state.

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The job of collecting and disseminating NPI data fell on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS.GOV). They named the database and the programs that feed the beast the National Plan and Provider Enumeration System (NPPES). 

 

It is from this database that CMS.GOV exports data and makes available this exported data. Yes, there are some 'lookup' sites that get some people by. They can at least get the job done - disseminating NPI information.  But these 'lookups' do not compare to the wealth of data available when using the exported NPPES data - transformed into a relational database you directly access. 

 

Larger healthcare companies do transform the NPPES data to a relational database, for their own internal use. These large corporations know the value of this data, have you seen any large corporation say "Hey, you want to use our NPPES derived relational database?"

 

Not once. Not at any price has any large corporation made publicly available their databases derived from the CMS.GOV NPPES database exports.

 

Who Does Publish A Usable Version Of The NPPES Data?

 

We know of only two organizations that make the NPPES data provided by CMS.GOV available in a usable relational database format. While these organizations are competitors to MediSeek, we view our products as more modern, more in-depth, more accessible to everyone and definitely less expensive.

 

We know the kind of expense involved in transforming the NPPES data to a relational database and it's not trivial. We've successfully done it. Our Recaster product performs this transformation and it's in its 3rd major revision. We have been using Recaster internally since about 2018. It's a refined product and the basis for all our other products.