Methodology Declaration
Physician Vetting
What the physician Snapshot and Full Report check, how each record is tied to the right physician, and what neither one checks. Credit costs for each are on the pricing page.
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Overview
The physician vetter produces two documents about one US physician.
- The Snapshot confirms who the physician is from their National Provider Identifier (NPI) record and checks whether they are on the federal list of people excluded from federal health-care programs.
- The Full Report starts from the same two checks, then reads industry payments, federal research grants, registered clinical studies, publications and US federal court records, and writes twelve sections from what it found.
Every report carries the date its records were read. A record that could not be read on a run is reported as not checked. A failed lookup is never presented as a clean result.
Absence is not clearance. When a check finds nothing, the report says nothing was found in that record on that date. It does not say the physician is clear.
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Who the Report Is About
You give a 10-digit NPI, or a name with an optional state and specialty.
- An NPI is looked up directly.
- A name is searched against the national NPI record. A candidate is accepted only when the surname matches and the first name matches. An initial or a shortened form of the first name is accepted; a different first name is not.
- When two candidates match equally well, no one is chosen. The run stops with "no matching physician found" and asks for the NPI, rather than writing about whoever came first.
Everything after that is tied to the NPI record that was found: name, credential, primary and additional specialties, practice addresses, the states attached to the specialty entries, the date the NPI was issued, and whether the NPI is active.
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The Snapshot
The Snapshot reads two records: the NPI record and the federal health-program exclusion list. It has five parts.
| Part | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Snapshot Summary | A short summary written only from the two records below. |
| Subject Identification | Name, NPI, primary specialty, state, city and NPI status, as the NPI record lists them. |
| Federal exclusion check | Whether the physician is on the federal exclusion list, under the matching rule in the next part of this page. |
| Specialty & Practice | The primary specialty entry and the states attached to the specialty entries. |
| Methodology & Limits | What the Snapshot read, and that it is not a license-board verification, a malpractice search or a clinical-competence assessment. |
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What the Full Report Reads, and When a Record Counts
A name is not an identifier. Many physicians share a name, so each record below has its own rule for when an entry is credited to this physician. Entries that fail the rule are not presented as findings.
| Record | What is taken from it | When it counts as this physician's |
|---|---|---|
| National NPI record | Identity, credential, specialties, practice addresses, states, issue date, active status. | It is the anchor every other record is checked against. |
| Federal health-program exclusion list | Whether the physician is excluded, the exclusion type and dates. | Only when the entry carries the physician's NPI or date of birth. An entry that matches on name alone is noted in plain words as an unconfirmed name match, never as a finding. An entry with a different NPI, date of birth or middle initial is dropped. |
| Federal record of industry payments to physicians | Total payments, number of payments, top paying companies and top payment categories, across up to the five most recent program years. | Read by NPI. |
| Federal research-grant awards | Grants, amounts, project titles and status. | Only when a named principal investigator matches the physician's name and the awarded organisation is in the physician's practice city and state, or is their employer. |
| Federal registry of clinical studies | Studies, phase, status and investigator role. | Only when a named overall official matches the physician's name and a study site or the official's affiliation is in the practice city and state, or names their employer. |
| Biomedical publication index and citation measures | Publication counts and citation measures. | A name search finds every author with that surname and initial, and nothing ties those papers to this physician, so the report credits none of them and gives no publication counts. |
| US federal court dockets and opinions | Cases in which the name appears, from 1990 onward. | Searched by name. Each case is graded by how strongly it points to this person; low-confidence name mentions are not treated as cases. State courts are not searched. |
| The physician's own practice, hospital or profile page | A portrait. | Only when that page carries the physician's NPI or license number, or a practice address from the NPI record together with their name. Otherwise the report has no photo. |
Checks on the finished report
Before a Full Report is marked complete, its text is checked against its sources.
- Cited links that no longer resolve are removed.
- A sentence that presents a name-only match as a possible or likely match is removed.
- An adverse claim (litigation, sanctions, fraud, misconduct and the like) with no working source beside it is removed.
- A number with no working source beside it is removed.
- Sentences about exclusions, publication counts, grants or clinical studies that the credited records do not support are removed.
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The Twelve Sections of a Full Report
| # | Section | Built from |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Executive Summary | Written last, from the eleven other sections, framed for the use you chose: credentialing review, patient, expert witness, or self-verification. |
| 2 | Identity & Credentials | The NPI record: credential, issue date, primary specialty, practice address and states. Ends with what the NPI record does not tell you. |
| 3 | Specialty & Sub-specialty Profile | The primary and additional specialty entries on the NPI record. |
| 4 | License & Disciplinary History | The federal exclusion result, NPI status, the states on the NPI record, and the name and lookup link of the state medical board. The board lookup is a link for you to run; the report does not query it. |
| 5 | Publication & Research Record | Credited research grants and credited clinical studies. Publication counts are not credited, for the reason given above. |
| 6 | Industry Compensation Profile | The industry-payment record: lifetime and most recent year totals, number of payments, top companies and categories. Reported as data; a payment is not treated as improper. |
| 7 | Pharma Conflict Risk Flag | A LOW, MODERATE or HIGH verdict. The starting point is computed from the payment record: HIGH when lifetime payments are $100,000 or more and one company accounts for half or more of them; MODERATE when lifetime payments are $100,000 or more otherwise; LOW below that. |
| 8 | Hospital Affiliations & Practice Setting | The practice addresses on the NPI record, plus affiliations on credited clinical studies. Hospital privileges are not checked. |
| 9 | Public Reputation & Patient Sentiment | Professional-standing signals only: credited grants and studies. Patient reviews are not read; the section tells you to review them yourself. |
| 10 | Malpractice Surface | The federal exclusion result. Civil malpractice cases are not searched here; the section says so and points to medical-legal counsel and your credentialing verification organization. |
| 11 | Network & Referral Map | Built only from credited publications and clinical-study teams. With no credited publications, the section says the map cannot be built from a record tied to this physician. Referral patterns are not in any record we read. |
| 12 | References & Source Citations | Every link cited in the sections above, deduplicated and grouped by source class. |
A separate Litigation History block shows the federal court result, or states that the court search did not run.
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What the Physician Vetter Does Not Check
Checked
- NPI record: identity, specialty, practice address, states, active status.
- Federal health-program exclusion list, credited on NPI or date of birth.
- Full Report only: industry payments by NPI, credited research grants, credited clinical studies, US federal court records by name.
Not checked: run these yourself
- State medical boards: not queried. The report names the board for the physician's state where it can, with its lookup link.
- National Practitioner Data Bank: not queried. For credentialing, query it through your credentialing verification organization.
- Specialty board certification: not checked.
- State court cases: not searched.
- Hospital privileges: not checked.
- Patient reviews: not read.
- Referral patterns and claims data: not available.
The report never judges whether a physician is good or bad at clinical care. It states what the records show and leaves the judgement to you. The report contains no patient-identifiable information.
Methodology v2.0 · Published 2026-09-29 · MentionFoxFounder methodology →