Checking a physician before you trust them, in under ten minutes.
A primary-care physician referred you to a specialist. Or you found a doctor through Google, your insurance plan's directory, or your employer's HMO. Or your aging parent has been told they need a new cardiologist. Before you sit in the chair, here is the workflow that compresses a credentialing-committee's research into a single citation-rich report.
The scenario
You have an appointment in three days. A new specialist. The referring physician's office handed you a name, a phone number, and a directions card. They mentioned the specialist by first name as if you should know them. You don't.
You want to know:
- Is this physician actually licensed in the state? In good standing?
- Are they board-certified by ABMS in the relevant specialty? Or by a non-ABMS board you've never heard of?
- Have they been excluded from Medicare or Medicaid (OIG LEIE)?
- Is there a pattern of state medical-board disciplinary actions?
- Civil malpractice cases — how many, and what kind?
- Are they receiving payments from pharmaceutical or device companies (Sunshine Act / Open Payments)?
- What does the public reputation look like across patient-review aggregators?
The traditional answer is: trust your referrer, because each of those questions takes 20 minutes of clicking through different state board websites. The MentionFox answer is one report that surfaces all of it with citations.
Why this matters
Physician credentialing data is fragmented across federal agencies (CMS NPI Registry, OIG LEIE, Open Payments), state boards (one website per state, with vastly different lookup interfaces), specialty boards (ABMS plus 150+ non-ABMS boards of varying rigor), and private aggregators (Healthgrades, ZocDoc, Vitals). A patient cannot reasonably check all of these manually.
The signals that matter most are not surfaced by any of these sites individually:
- An OIG LEIE match is dispositive — but the patient needs to know that exclusion exists.
- Multiple state-board disciplinary actions across different states are a pattern. A single state's website cannot show that pattern.
- Open Payments receipts at certain dollar thresholds correlate with prescribing patterns.
- Non-ABMS specialty board certifications can look just like ABMS to a patient who doesn't know the difference.
What to verify on a physician
- NPI verified identity. 10-digit National Provider Identifier from CMS.
- State licensure of record. Active license in the state where the physician practices.
- OIG LEIE federal exclusion check. Federal exclusion from Medicare and Medicaid programs. A positive match is dispositive.
- ABMS board certification. ABMS Member Boards represent the rigorous specialty-cert standard in US medicine.
- Disciplinary history. Each state-board disciplinary action quoted from the board's public record.
- Civil malpractice surface. CourtListener civil case search bounded by litigation-activity disclaimers.
- Open Payments / Sunshine Act receipts. Pharmaceutical and device payments above the disclosure threshold.
- Patient sentiment aggregation. Healthgrades, ZocDoc, Vitals reviews. Treated as patient-experience signal.
What a patient's ten minutes looks like
Open the Physician Vetter
Type the physician's last name + state. The NPI Registry returns a candidate list. Pick the right person from the disambiguation card.
Pick the patient-research mode
Use-case mode tunes the headline toward consumer-relevant signals. Click "Generate Snapshot".
Snapshot returns
One page. Headline says "License clean / ABMS-certified Cardiology / No OIG match / No state-board actions / 0 civil malpractice cases / Open Payments below the patient-relevance threshold". You exhale.
Or — headline says something else
Snapshot says "License clean / ABMS-certified / No OIG match / 1 state-board action 2018 (formal reprimand, license-restricted 6 months)". Now you know to read further.
Upgrade to full report if needed
Click "Upgrade to Full Vetting Report". The report runs over the next 5-7 minutes, providing twelve sections of detail.
Decision time
Either keep the appointment with confidence, or call the referring physician's office and ask for a second referral.
The headline outcomes — what the report tells you
Clean record (most common)
License active, ABMS-certified in the relevant specialty, no OIG match, no state-board actions, civil malpractice surface clean or below the noise floor, Open Payments below threshold.
Old action, since cleared
One historical state-board action that has since been cleared, license is currently in good standing, ABMS-certified, no current concerns.
Active pattern flag
Multiple state-board actions across states, OR a recent action with current restrictions, OR an OIG LEIE match. The headline flags this clearly and recommends seeking a different specialist.
Non-ABMS certification
Physician describes themselves as "board-certified" in materials, but the certification is from a non-ABMS board. The report flags the distinction.
Pricing for this use case
One Physician Snapshot
Patient pre-appointment screen.
10 credits
The right tier when the referral is from a trusted source. Returns in 60 seconds.
One Physician Vetting Report
Decision-quality verification before high-stakes care.
50 credits
The right tier before surgery, before chronic-care management, or before a long-term specialty engagement.
Credits are platform-wide. A Pro plan includes a credit grant monthly; pay-as-you-go credit packs are available. See pricing for current plans.
Related
Physician Vetting Reports → Pharmacist Vetting Reports → Veterinarian Vetting Reports → Methodology: Physician →