National Provider Directory set to launch this year with beta test

Bob Herman covers health insurance, government programs, hospitals, physicians, and other providers — reporting on how money influences those businesses and shapes what we all pay for care. He is also the author of the Health Care Inc. newsletter. You can reach Bob on Signal at bobjherman.09.

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.

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