Main Library
In Spring 2023, AMA President Dr. Jack Resneck, Jr. sat before the Senate Finance Committee and discussed the critical state of physician directories, which are, by all accounts, riddled with inaccurate data. To demonstrate, on the morning of the hearing, the committee’s chair, Senator Ron Wyden, released the results of a study in which phone calls were made to 120 provider listings across 12 different health plans. The data revealed that 33% of those listings were inaccurate, had nonworking numbers, or had unreturned calls.
In his testimony, Dr. Resneck noted, “Imagine selecting a health plan and paying health insurance premiums only to find out that you relied on erroneous information. Imagine the sense of helplessness and frustration amongst patients when they cannot access the care on which they were counting.”
A recent study that discovered inaccuracies in 80% of entries in the nation’s five largest health networks’ directories puts the issue’s scope into perspective. With more than half of patients using a health plan’s provider directory to select a physician, incorrect physician information has quietly become one of the biggest barriers to treatment. Value-based care is supposed to optimize patient outcomes, but that’s tough to do when patients can’t find the appropriate healthcare services.