Like all information on the web, the quality and accuracy of information about physicians that is available to the general public varies greatly from site to site. Physician information is posted by both public and private organizations, including the Pennsylvania Board of Medicine, the AMA, some state and county medical societies, many hospitals, consumer groups, commercial rating services and insurers. These reports are now available to consumers online. Additionally, consumer advocates have continuously lobbied Congress to open the National Practitioner Data Bank to the public. The NPDB maintains information on medical malpractice payments, adverse licensure actions, adverse clinical privilege actions, and adverse professional society membership actions.
Access is restricted to hospitals, government agencies and entities which perform peer review.
The efforts to open the NPDB have been expanded to cover the new Healthcare Integrity and Protection Data Bank that maintains information about health care fraud and other sanctions. Their directory is not currently online, but hard copies may be purchased through their web site. The 2000 edition lists 20,125 doctors who have been sanctioned. Physicians are rightfully concerned that unfiltered access to much of this information without appropriate safeguards may be detrimental to informed patient decision making, and may have distorting effects on patient access to care. For example, the HC4 data on CABG grafts may show high mortality numbers for a cardiac surgeon who routinely handles the most severe cases.