The National Practitioner Data Bank

1. The National Practitioner Data Bank

2. What is the National Practitioner Data Bank? • Is a tool available to state licensing boards, hospitals and other health care organizations, professional societies, and governmental agencies to improve the quality of health care. • The data bank collects information to identify adverse or disciplinary actions takes against physicians, dentists, and other health professionals. • The data bank was created by the Health Care Quality Improvement Act of 1986 and began operation in 1990.

3. Why the Data Bank? • The intent of the data bank is to improve the quality of health care by encouraging physicians, dentists, and other health care practitioners to identify and discipline those who engage in unprofessional conduct. • It is also its intention to restrict the ability of incompetent practitioners from moving from state to state without discovery of the practitioner’s previous damaging or incompetent performance.

4. Intention of Congress Overall, Congress intended to encourage professional peer review activities while at the same time creating a national clearinghouse of information about malpractice payments and adverse and disciplinary actions takes against physicians and dentists.

5. Reporting Requirements The data bank collects and releases to eligible parties the following information: • malpractice payments • refunds made in response to a written request • adverse licensure actions • adverse actions of clinical privileges • adverse actions of professional society memberships

6. How Is Information Used? • Used to inquire into specific areas of a practitioner’s licensure, professional society memberships, malpractice payment history, and record of sanctions of clinical privileges. • Intended to augment, not replace, traditional forms of credentials review. • It is a nationwide flagging system that provides another resource to assist state licensing boards, hospitals, and other health care entities in conducting extensive independent investigations of the qualifications of the practitioners they seek to license, hire or grant clinical privileges.

7. Accessing the ‘Bank’ The following entities have access to the ‘Bank.’ • Hospitals • State licensing boards • Any health care entity screening applicants for appointments or granting privileges • Professional societies • Plaintiff’s attorneys and plaintiffs. • Practitioners may review their own file Professional liability insurers may not request information from the bank.