It’s ridiculous! Medicare had attempted to push Providers to adopt a NPI (National Provider Identifier) which is intended to replace the moderately utilized UPIN for Medicare. I can only imagine the complexity, frustration, and inconsistent data pools that exist between federal and state agencies as all parties begin the migration to NPI utilization as well as attempting to spread consistent adoption and broad agency data synchronization.
Unfortunately, as we began aggregating providers there has been a serious lack of consistent and timely data about Providers. From the Provider’s perspective, I often wonder if they’re sick and tired of the continual flood of code and documentation redundant requests and lack of intra-system communication. As a consumer, it seems that the ONLY broad and accurate source of Provider information is the phone book. Why? Because it is a referral mechanism. Providers WANT to maintain correct contact information so patients and other Providers can contact them.
Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. Isn’t the web supposed to support the notion of semantic data exchange? How is it that across a multitude of email and web applications every consumer and Joe Schmoe can easily and simply export or share their contact information in a basic format found in Microsoft Outlook (aka a vCard or .vcf). One entity implemented a standard that became a widely adopted and pseudo-semantic standard.
It’s simple and obvious
I’m sick and tired of everyone building non-open systems and proprietary standards. What a freak’n waste! If consumers use a vCard to exchange contact information, why isn’t there a doctor vCard? A dCard, if you will… What if a web company found several other open and like-minded provider entities who all adopted the same dCard standard so that Providers could easily and simply move, exchange, and maintain their contact and credentialing information seamlessly across the Internet. No. Not via some expensive nor closed system. Just a simple data format/standard.
What if this standard was applied across 900,000+ practicing Providers and included contact and summary credential data as well as obvious consumer-centric data elements like “Office Days and Hours” (Duh?!) and “Accepting New Patients”. That’s right! Not 1,000. Not 10,000. But almost a million Providers.
The dCard
Is it possible that several national and leading organizations could agree upon such a simple standard? Yes they can. Though, there will be some “old school” entities that will desire to perpetuate their own proprietary forms and closed data systems that require Providers to repetitively send/enter/maintain multiple versions of their contact information.
Yes this standard has been established! It will be made an open standard and ANYONE will be able to adopt, share, and implement making it SIGNIFICANTLY less cumbersome for Providers to choose to easily provide and exchange information – as well as web services that support providers and consumers.
Finally, the easiest and most obvious question of “Are we talking about the same Dr. Jones?” can finally be addressed [no pun intended].
More to be announced soon.
