by Heidi Dawson, RN, CMSR
A part of the art of physician recruitment known to professional physician recruiters is being able to know the resources available and how to make them work for you. These resources can help the recruiter to discover the complete background of a health care applicant to make a better decision in selecting candidates most qualified for the opening. One of the most valuable of these resources is the National Practitioner Databank.
The databank was started as a means of alerting inquiring parties such as hospitals and other health care facilities of any formal or informal actions taken against a medical professional. This resource will divulge malpractice payments or malfeasance reports across state lines on a national level. Before the creation of the databank by the Health Care Quality Improvement Act of 1986, this information was only available pertaining to the physician’s actions within a certain state. Physician recruiters and hiring entities were unable to find out if the physician being recruited had any problems in other parts of the country unless disclosed fully by the applicant.
The National Practitioner Databank does not disclose its information directly to the general public or to physician recruiters directly. The only way that those in physician recruitment can get the information for an applicant is to ask the applicant that they requests the information on their practice history from the National Practitioner Databank, which is known as a “self query.” As a physician recruiter, you might have to wait 2 – 3 weeks before the applicant returns the National Practitioner Databank report to you. For this reason, it is important that you inform the applicants as soon as possible of their need to request a report. Obviously an unwillingness to submit to this request is a red flag and probably opens up the need to ask further questions of a candidate.
The process for an applicant to request their information from the databank is simple, but they should be aware that there will be a nominal fee payable by credit card only. This fulfills the fees for requesting information from both databases in the National Practitioner Databank. The physician recruitment agency or the health care facility can determine whether or not they will reimburse the applicant if he is accepted for the position. The application form must be filled out on the National Practitioner Databank website, printed and signed before a notary public before being mailed to the National Practitioner Databank address on the application. Once the signed form has been received, it will take up to two business days to process the information, after which the report is mailed to the inquiring health care professional. The total time can be up to two full weeks.
Why would those in physician recruiting bother to use the National Practitioner Databank? Information about disciplinary actions taken against doctors is readily available on the Internet on a state by state basis, and much of this information is accessible to the public, but reporting of merely allegations of medical and professional malfeasance is not listed on the state databases. A physician might have received a reprimand for his behavior nine times, but unless a formal action is taken, a physician recruiter or hiring entity would never know by relying only on the state-provided information.
All formal and informal disciplinary reports against a medical professional are listed on the National Practitioner Databank, but the results from the databank need to be interpreted carefully by physician recruiters and hiring entities alike. Simply on the basis of a payment for a claim of malpractice does not necessitate the need to omit that candidate from consideration for a position. Settlement out of court can occur even if the doctor is innocent of the charges, but wants to avoid the bad publicity a trial would bring. Further investigation into the total history of the health care professional needs to be made by the physician recruiter.
The complete professional history of the medical professional can be assessed with the National Practitioner Databank. Should there be a question about a malpractice claim payment, examining other actions taken against the doctor should be done. Included in the databank are: revocation, suspension, censure, reprimand, probation, surrender, denial of an application for renewal of a medical license, and withdrawal of an application for renewal of license. The privileges a medical professional has at a clinic or health care facility and any adverse actions taken by professional societies to which he might be a member. If there are several reprimands for similar actions or from several different facilities, it could be an alert to the physician recruitment agency or hiring entity that that applicant might not be professionally qualified.
Other things for physician recruiters to take into consideration when using the National Practitioner Databank include the fact that the information from the databank might not tell the entire story. The applicant’s credentials, peer review, and continuous education or assessments need to also be factored in to determine if a health care professional should be hired. These factors can add weight to the report from the National Practitioner Databank.
The physician recruiter should carefully look over the report from the National Practitioner Databank provided by the applicant for any evidence of tampering. The databank has gotten complaints from third parties, such as physician recruitment agencies, of databank reports submitted to them from physicians which had been tampered with. A history of several instances of altering the documents before turning them over to the recruiters has been made. Should there be any signs that any of the information was changed, the physician recruiter can request another copy from the physician or omit him from consideration for the position.
Professional physician recruiting services know how to use the information from the National Practitioner Databank to their best advantage. Without being able to directly access the physician candidate’s history on the databank, the recruiter must be able to trust that the report given to him from the “self-query” filed by the applicant is accurate. An assessment of the report should only be a piece of the larger picture of a physician candidate’s application, but obviously evidence that the report was changed in any way could signal an underlying problem that the candidate wishes to hide. Such actions can bar the candidate from being considered for employment, depending upon other data available from the application. Using available resources to your best advantage is a hallmark of professional physician recruiters.
To learn more about the National Practicioner DataBank and its use in the physician recruitment process please feel free to contact us by calling 312-83-4DOCS (3627) or by filling out the form below.