CMS has released a notice establishing the data that are available from the national plan and provider enumeration system (NPPES), which houses healthcare providers’ national provider identifier (NPIs) numbers and information from their NPI applications and updates. The NPPES would also be capable of enumerating health plans and housing their standard unique health identifiers, once adopted.
Beginning May 23, 2007, covered entities under HIPAA are required to use NPIs to identify healthcare providers in standard transactions (small health plans have until May 23, 2008).
Due to extraordinary demand from the healthcare industry, the NPPES healthcare provider data will be available in downloadable files and in a query-only database on its NPI web page. CMS says that an update file will be available for download each month from the same web site. The query-only database will be refreshed each month also.
