New Pilot Service Will Provide Round-the-Clock Notification on Data Bank Enrollees
 The Proactive Disclosure Service (PDS), an enhancement to HRSA’s National Practitioner Data Bank and Healthcare Integrity and Protection Data Bank electronic reporting and disclosure system on health care professionals, will automatically notify subscribers via e-mail of new or modified reports within 24 hours of the information’s arrival to the Data Banks.
Scheduled to be launched April 30 as a pilot project, PDS will end the need for Data Banks customers – which include hospitals, managed care organizations, state and federal agencies and group medical practices – to initiate a regular “query” for up-to-date information on practitioners they employ or want to hire.
Currently, to meet the law’s requirements, queries are made to the Data Banks using system software by the registered customer’s staff every two years on each practitioner that is currently employed or seeking employment.
Query dates vary, depending on initial hiring dates or independent querying cycles, and require constant attention on the part of registered customers.
As a result, an average of 302 days lapse between receipt of a new Data Banks report on a practitioner and response to a regular query. PDS will do away with those delays by e-mailing subscribers a notice about new reports on physicians, dentists and other healthcare practitioners enrolled in the new service within 24 hours – regardless of weekends or holidays.
Reports include information on practitioner involvement in malpractice payments; suspension of clinical privileges or professional membership; adverse licensure actions, healthcare related civil judgments and criminal convictions; and exclusion from Medicare or Medicaid.
“PDS shows that HRSA is capable of thinking outside the box by using improved information technology to help save lives and prevent injuries,” said Mark Pincus, chief of the Practitioner Data Banks Branch. “Right now, a hospital can query the Data Banks on a doctor today and nothing may show up. Yet if an adverse report on a practitioner comes in the following day, that hospital may not know about it for as long as two years. With PDS, a report comes in one day, and subscribers are notified the next.”
Besides being faster, Pincus says PDS will be easier to manage. “When hospitals enroll practitioners in PDS, all they have to do after that is make sure their enrollee list is up to date,” he explained. “They’ll no longer need to pay someone to conduct regular queries.”
The cost estimate for using PDS should roughly equal the current Data Bank price of $3.16 per practitioner per year, Pincus adds.
PDS was developed over three years of focus group discussions with current Data Banks customers, in response to the growing need for continuous monitoring of health care practitioners. Pincus says it will meet mandatory hospital querying requirements.
Subscribers can enroll practitioners in PDS individually while continuing to query on others or they may enroll their entire practitioner database. Enrollment in the new service will be limited during the 18-month pilot period.
The PDS launch event will take place in Parklawn Conference Rooms D & E on April 30 from 1 to 3 p.m.
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Did You Know....
The intent of PDS is to protect the public, improve the quality of health care, and deter fraud and abuse in the health care system by providing information about past adverse actions of practitioners, providers or suppliers to authorized health care entities and agencies as soon as it is received by the Data Banks. |
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