Physicians always have been justifiably concerned about reports to the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) regarding malpractice payments and adverse peer review actions. Two areas of frequent uncertainty have been:

1) Reporting malpractice payments made on behalf of entities, typically hospitals, when the individual physicians have been dismissed from the malpractice actions; and

2) Determining whether physicians should be reported if they have resigned while a peer review action

The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the division of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) responsible for administering the data bank, has just proposed a revision to the NPDB Guidebook. The current version of the Guidebook was published in September 2001, so it is past due for an update.

Originally published in ACMC Bulletin - December 2013.