Joint Commission on Quality and Safety Journal T he Health Care Quality Improvement Act of 1986 1 was designed to improve the ability of hospitals and other health care entities to obtain informa- tion on the malpractice and disciplinary sanction histories of physicians seeking affiliation (employment, admitting privileges), regardless of the state in which those events took place. The act led to the establishment on September 1, 1990, of the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), to which any entity that pays a malprac- tice claim for the benefit of a practitioner, and certain entities taking significant professional review actions against practitioners, must report.* The NPDB collects the following information: ■ Medical malpractice payments on behalf of practi- tioners (physicians, dentists, nurses, and any other licensed health care practitioners); ■ Adverse licensure actions; ■ Suspension of clinical privileges exceeding 30 days; ■ Adverse professional society membership actions; and ■ Exclusion from Medicare and Medicaid programs. As of December 31, 2001, the NPDB had received 291,520 reports on 178,745 practitioners. 2 Malpractice payments represented 72.9% of these reports, 17.8% were reportable actions (licensure, clinical privileges, professional society membership, Drug Enforcement Administration actions), and Medicare/Medicaid exclu- sions comprised the balance (9.3%). Physicians repre- sented 69.4% of the practitioners reported to the NPDB; the remaining practitioners were dentists (13.9%), 416 August 2003 Volume 29 Number 8 Background: The National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) serves as a federal information clearinghouse on malpractice payments for and disciplinary sanctions against health care practitioners. Hospitals are required to query the NPDB biannually for practitioners with clinical privileges, and other health care entities with significant peer review are encouraged to query the NPDB. A study was conducted to determine whether health care organizations find the NPDB useful. Methods: A survey was conducted of 1,038 organi- zations that queried the NPDB between March 1998 and February 1999; 653 of those respondents also answered questions regarding 1,639 specific matched responses (feedback from the NPDB when the practitioner in question had one or more reports). Results: Overall, the entities rated querying the NPDB as very useful (6.16 on a 7-point scale). More than 21% of matched responses contained new information, and this information altered institutional credentialing decisions in more than 5% of the cases. Discussion: Many of the results from this study are consistent with findings in Office of Inspector General reports. The fact that 5% of credentialing decisions were altered because of NPDB information suggests that practitioner self-report is an inadequate mechanism for soliciting credentialing information. Summary and conclusions: NPDB reports provide accurate and complete information that is useful to providers in their credentialing process. Article-at-a-Glance How Useful is the Information Provided by the National Practitioner Data Bank? Credentialing and Privileging Teresa M. Waters, PhD Jennifer Parsons, MA Richard Warnecke, PhD Orit Almagor, MA Peter P. Budetti, MD, JD * The act is implemented by the Bureau of Health Professions, Division of General Quality Assurance, Health Resources and Services Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Copyright 2003 Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations