Question

Discuss your opinion of the function(s) served by the National Practitioner Data Bank.

Answer 1

National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB)is a programme which was established by Congress in 1986 in the United States as a workforce tool in order to prevent and reduce health care fraud and abuse in U.S. Thereby improving the health care quality, and protect the public through collecting information on medical malpractice payments and certain adverse action related to health care practitioners, providers and suppliers. This federal programme entitles certain eligible organizations to report and enquire classified information about health care practitioners and healthcare related people who were charged with malpractice and other damaging performances. This law helps recruiters, healthcare organization to check the credibility of health care practitioners who are moving to others states to identify previous adverse actions made by them. This system now prevents medical practitioners with bad work record to get licence in other states. This system also help to improve the competency of healthcare providers in the U.S. National Practitioner Data Bank acts as a whistle-blower while hiring medical practitioner to an organization. Thus NPDB data would be available to entities involved in granting or denying, credentials and privileges to health care providers and to the appropriate licensing boards of the various states which helps to allow employ competent medical practitioners to serve the public and reducing the adverse actions in medicare.