Study Underscores Challenge of Fixing Provider Directory Woes

A new paper published in BMC Health Services Research by researchers from the University of Colorado found that national provider directories are highly inaccurate — yet another data point confirming payers’ self-described difficulties assembling accurate provider directories. One of the paper’s authors tells AIS Health, a division of MMIT, that he thinks the problem is unlikely to be solved soon. 

The paper compared providers listed in the online directories of five large insurers (UnitedHealth Group, Elevance Health, Inc., The Cigna Group, CVS Health Corp.’s Aetna, and Humana Inc.) to the Medicare Provider Enrollment, Chain, and Ownership System (PECOS) database — and found that more than 70% of all studied provider data was not consistent across insurers.