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QUESTION:        When a health care provider obtains a self-query from the National Practitioner Data Bank (“NPDB”), does the self-query indicate how many times a hospital itself has queried that provider?

 

ANSWER:            The short answer is that, in limited circumstances, this information will be included in the self-query for the health care provider.  The NPDB discloses all reports about a health care practitioner to hospitals that submit queries about that practitioner and, as a result, those disclosures are indicated on the self-query.  That information is available to the practitioner and contained in the self-query as part of the disclosure history.  However, if there are no reports to be disclosed about a health care practitioner, the NPDB does not inform the individual of the hospital queries, as no disclosures were made.

Federal law provides that the NPDB collect information and maintain reports on medical malpractice payments, federal and state licensure and certification actions, adverse clinical privileges actions, adverse professional society membership actions, negative actions or findings by private accreditation organizations and peer review organizations, health care-related criminal convictions and civil judgments, exclusions from participation in a federal or state health care program (including Medicare and Medicaid exclusions), and other adjudicated actions or decisions.

The reports maintained by the NPDB are disclosed upon query to hospitals, which are mandated by federal law to submit such queries at the time the health care practitioner applies for a position on its medical staff or clinical privileges at the hospital and every two years for any health care practitioner on its medical staff or with clinical privileges at the hospital.  According to the NPDB, when the hospital submits a query, the NPDB releases only the information it is lawfully allowed to access.  A hospital can query through the NPDB using a one-time query, which allows for a one-time query response for a practitioner, or a continuous query, which allows the hospital to receive a query response and all new or updated report notifications during the year-long enrollment for each practitioner.

Also available through the NPDB is a self-query, which can be submitted by a health care practitioner about his or her own information kept by the NPDB.  The self-query searches to determine if the health care practitioner’s own information provided matches information in reports previously submitted to the NPDB.  The response may show that no matching information was found in the NPDB, or it may show that information about medical malpractice payments, adverse licensure or privileges actions, or judgments and convictions was found, in which case the full report(s) will be provided to that health care practitioner as part of the self-query.

In the instance a health care provider submits a self-query and no matching information or reports are found, the health care provider will not see how many times any hospital has queried that provider.  However, when there are reports returned on a health care provider, the self-query will not necessarily show how many times that provider was queried, but will indicate how and who the reports were disclosed to when that provider was queried.