SUMMARY

DDOD use case to link Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Open Payments dataset to a physician's National Provider Identifier (NPI).

WHAT IS A USE CASE?

A “Use Case” is a request that was made by the user community because there were no available datasets that met their particular needs. If this use case is similar to your needs, we ask that you add your own requirements to the specifications section.

The concept of a use case falls within the Demand-Driven Open Data (DDOD) program and gives you a formalized way to identify what data you need. It’s for anyone in industry, research, media, nonprofits or other government agencies. Each request becomes a DDOD use case, so that it can be prioritized and worked on.

Use Cases also provide a wealth of insights about existing alternative datasets and tips for interpreting and manipulating data for specific purposes.

PURPOSE

Linking the Open Payments dataset to NPI would allow for matching to other datasets which use NPI.

VALUE

A common physician identifier across all datasets would allow for provider cost and quality analytics across datasets.

USE CASE SPECIFICATIONS & SOLUTION

Information about this use cases is maintained in a wiki: http://hhs.ddod.us/wiki/Use_Case_29:_Link_Open_Payments_dataset_to_NPI

It serves as a knowledge base.

USE CASE DISCUSSION FORUM

All communications between Data Users, DDOD Administrators and Data Owners are logged as discussions within GitHub issues: https://github.com/demand-driven-open-data/ddod-intake/issues/29

It aims to provide complete transparency into the process and ensure the same message gets to all participants.

CASE STATUS

Closed, as the legislation that made Open Payments possible explicitly forbids reporting of the NPI.