New York State Department of Health
Physician Profile
2017 Annual Report

 Table of Contents
Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2017 Efforts to Enhance the Profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2017 Activity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Future Improvements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

 Executive Summary
The Patient Health Information and Quality Improvement Act of 2000 established the Physician Profile
to provide all New Yorkers with information about physicians who are licensed and registered to
practice in New York State. The Physician Profile is a one-stop source of information published on the
Department website for over 97,000 physicians, as of December 31, 2017. www.nydoctorprofile.com
The Act also requires the Department to issue an annual report to the Legislature on the status of the
physician profiles and any recommendations for additions, consolidations or other changes deemed
appropriate.
This report describes the status of the Profile and actions taken by the Department to improve the
usefulness and utility of the Profile.
The Physician Profile is one of the Department’s most popular sites. Its use has grown, averaging over
3,000,000 page views per month since January 2017. The Physician Profile contains 81 data elements in
four primary categories: education, practice information, legal actions, and professional activities.
Physicians are required to initiate a profile within 30 days of being licensed by the New York State
Education Department. They are also required to update their Profile information within the six months
prior to the expiration date of their biennial registration period as a condition of registration renewal.
The Department has made several improvements to make the Physician Profile more user-friendly and
to improve the content quality of the Profile’s information.
Looking to the future, the Department will continue to enhance the usefulness and utility of the
Physician Profile, and will continue to work with stakeholders to ensure the availability of accurate,
meaningful information about physicians, other practitioners, and other providers to patients and the
public.

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 Introduction
The Patient Health Information and Quality Improvement Act of 2000 established the Physician Profile
to provide all New Yorkers with information about physicians who are licensed and registered to
practice in New York State. The Physician Profile is a one-stop source of information published on the
Department website for over 97,000 physicians, as of December 31, 2017. www.nydoctorprofile.com
The Act also requires the Department to issue an annual report to the Legislature on the status of the
physician profiles and any recommendations for additions, consolidations or other changes deemed
appropriate.
This report describes the status of the Profile and actions taken by the Department to improve the
usefulness and utility of the Profile.
Overview of the Physician Profile
Pursuant to PHL § 2995‐a(4), physicians must report information in the Physician Profile and, as a
condition of registration renewal, update their Profile within six months prior to the expiration of the
physician’s current registration period.
Certain information is required to be available on the Profile for all physicians including:
• The physician’s medical education
• Translation services available at the physician’s office
• Legal actions taken against the physician
Physicians also have the opportunity, but are not required, to provide other information about their
practice on the Profile. Each doctor may add information regarding:
• The name, address, and phone number of all offices
• The names of other physicians in a practice group
• A listing of articles or research papers the physician has published
• A list of professional and community service activities or awards
• A list of health plans the physician works with
• A personal statement about any information in the physician’s Profile
The Physician Profile is one of the Department’s most popular sites. Its use has grown, averaging over
3,000,000 page views per month since January 2017.

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 Table 1: Average page views and visitors per month for the Physician Profile
Year
Average Page Views per month Average Visitors per month
2016*
2,094,745
19,167
2017

3,358,032

19,179

Page views: hits on specific pages; Visitors: unique visits, where each IP address is included once in the total number
*2016 data represents May-December 2016 due to an update in the vendor’s technology calculating website usage.

Completion of Initial Profile
Within 30 days of being licensed by the New York State Education Department (SED), physicians receive
a letter detailing the requirements of the Profile and instructions on how to complete their Profile. A
reminder letter is sent 45 days later to those who have not successfully submitted their Profile.
Biennial Update
PHL § 2995‐a requires each physician to update his or her Profile information within the six months prior
to the expiration date of the physician’s biennial registration period as a condition of registration
renewal. Under Education Law § 6524, physicians are required to update their Profile within the six
months prior to submission of registration.
Profile Information
The Physician Profile contains 81 data elements in four primary categories: education, practice
information, legal actions, and professional activities. A physician can also add a statement, at his or her
discretion. Approximately 80% of data items are related to mandatory information – meaning that the
information must be included on the Profile. The physician has the option of having his or her Profile
omit other information. Physicians directly report about two‐thirds of all data elements and about half
of the mandatory items. Information for the remaining data elements are collected from other sources
and verified by the physician. Physicians attest to the accuracy of the information on the Profile.
Optional information is not generally provided by physicians. Information about publications (14%) and
personal statements (16%) is supplied less frequently by the physician than information about
professional memberships (43%) and practice location (48%). Approximately one-third of physicians
include health plan affiliation information on their Profile.
Efforts to Enhance the Profile
Chapter 57 of the Laws of 2015 amended PHL § 2995‐a(13) to require DOH to study the feasibility of
incorporating health plan network participation information in the Profile, without imposing extra
burdens on physicians, and to ensure that information on the Profile is available, accurate, up‐to‐date,
and accessible to consumers. DOH worked with a broad spectrum of stakeholders including consumers
and physicians to conduct a comprehensive study of the Profile. This effort produced

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 recommendations to enhance the usefulness and utility of the Profile, contained in a report that was
issued in 2016 to Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
(http://www.health.ny.gov/health_care/consumer_information/physician_profile/docs/physician_profil
e_study_report.pdf)
The Department enhanced the Profile through the following:
• Implementing a more effective notification process to physicians of Profile reporting requirements,
and continuing to educate physicians about reporting requirements
• Improving the ease of use of the Profile website for all users by including the ability to search by an
increased number of medical specialties
• Improving reporting to the Profile by including a link for physicians to access their Profile through
SED’s website for physician licensure and registration.
The Department is in the process of implementing the following changes:
• Increasing consumer awareness of the Profile, and improving ease of use of the Profile website for
all users by conducting ongoing consumer education;
• Improving the website to make it easier to access from mobile technologies, improving navigation
of the website, and improving search capabilities; and
• Incorporation of health plan information from the Provider Network Data System (PNDS)

2017 Activity
Call Center
The Physician Profile’s call center is available Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. In 2017, the
center received a total of 10,556 calls from physicians, approximately 1,200 more than in 2016.
Questions could generally be categorized into three main categories: logging into or accessing the
Profile update application on the Health Commerce System (HCS), assistance with initiating and
updating their Profile and medical malpractice reporting.
The call center also answered 1,933 calls from consumers who generally requested hard copy
information from the Profile or had questions pertaining to medical malpractice or other legal actions.
Additionally, call center staff made 1,721 outbound calls, about the same number as in 2016. Outbound
calls primarily pertained to outreach to physicians regarding data verification and data completeness.
Letters
In 2017 the following hardcopy letters were sent:

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 Initial
Letter

Reminder
Letter

Survey

Review
Copy

Medical
Malpractice
Letter

Severity
Letter

4,896

4,083

883

849

777

276

Data
Verification &
Notification
Letter
127

Newly licensed or re-registered physicians receive an ‘Initial Letter’ telling them about the Profile and
their obligation to create one, giving them 30 days to initiate their Profile. A reminder letter is sent after
45 days if the physician has still not initiated a Profile. Physicians who wish to complete a paper version
of the Profile may request a hardcopy; this year DOH received 883 such requests. Physicians who
complete the paper survey are then mailed a ‘Review Copy’ to ensure that the responses entered on the
paper survey were correctly entered into the Profile database.
Prior to a medical malpractice payment being posted on a physician’s Profile, the DOH notifies the
physician via the ‘Medical Malpractice Letter’. This letter gives the physician the opportunity to dispute
the information or appeal the posting of the payment, depending on the physician’s medical malpractice
history. Occasionally the medical malpractice information will not contain enough information to
determine if the payment is relevant to patient decision-making. This is important because the law
requires that medical malpractice payments be posted to the Profile if the information about the event
would be relevant to patient decision-making. In those instances, a ‘Severity Letter’ is sent to the
physician prior to the ‘Medical Malpractice Letter’.
Finally, if DOH learns of missing Profile information from a physician, whether from the National
Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), another state medical board or any other source, the physician will
receive a ‘Data Verification & Notification Letter’ prior to that information being posted on the public
Profile. This year 127 such letters were sent to physicians.
Reminder e-mails
As part of the study of the Physician Profile that DOH conducted in 2015, the Department received
feedback from physicians indicating that reporting compliance could be significantly improved if they
could receive reminders of their obligation to update their Profile. Beginning in May 2016, DOH began
sending physicians reminder emails six months prior to the expiration of their registration and, if they
have not updated, again at three months prior to registration expiration. Additionally, physicians who
have re-registered but have never initiated a Profile or did not update their Profile receive an email
reminding them of their obligation, giving them 45 days to create or update their Profile.
In 2017, DOH sent over 86,000 emails to physicians. The reminders have been very successful in
improving physician compliance with creating and updating their Profiles, as seen in the chart below
resulting in a 400% increase in compliance since the date of implementation, marked by the dashed red
line.

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 Physician Profiling Compliance Rate
by Month of SED Re-Registration
45%
40%

40%
35%

29%

30%
25%
20%
15%
10%

7%

6%

5%
0%

OPMC
The Office of Professional Medical Conduct (OPMC) monitors compliance with Profile reporting
requirements. The OPMC initiated nearly 2,100 investigations of physicians who had not initiated or
updated their profile in 2017, approximately 200 more than in 2016. Additionally, OPMC closed over
2,300 investigations in 2017, achieving 98.5% profile initiation or update compliance for that group. The
New York State Board for Professional Medical Conduct (Board) issued penalties against three physicians
for failure to comply with physician profile regulations. These actions included a suspension, a fine and
a preclusion from the practice of medicine. Since 2008, when OPMC took over management of the
Profile, the Board has issued 10 actions against physicians for failing to comply with Profile
requirements, primarily because of the success in achieving physician compliance.

Future Improvements
Incorporation of PNDS Data
Based on DOH’s 2015 study, consumers expressed a strong desire for a listing of health plan networks in
which physicians participate to be included in the Profile. Determining which physicians accept their
health insurance product is a critical factor in considering a physician to be their care provider.

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 Although health plan network participation information is included in the Physician Profile, relying on
the Profile as the source of this information has, in the past, been challenging for the following reasons:
• A physician may choose to exclude that information from his or her profile.
• Many physicians participate in multiple health plan networks, so it has sometimes been challenging
for a physician to accurately report to the Profile every network in which he or she is a member.
• Network participation information is optional, and when a physician enters or separates from a
health plan network, reporting that new information to the Profile is not required until six months
prior to the end of the re‐registration period.
As a result, only 33% of physicians include health plan network participation information on their
current profiles, and the information that is included may be incomplete or outdated. This situation
exacerbates the challenge that consumers and patients experience in securing this important
information. However, ensuring that information related to health plan network participation is
accurate and current is easier today than it has been, for two reasons:
• The Surprise Bill Law (Financial Services Law Article 6 and Insurance Law § 3241(c)), which went
into effect March 31, 2015, requires health care professionals, including physicians, to disclose to
patients and prospective patients, in writing or through their website, their health plan and hospital
affiliations prior to the provision of non‐emergency services, in addition to verbally at the time the
appointment is scheduled.
• The Department currently collects various information directly from health plans, including which
physicians participate in their networks, for purposes not related to the Physician Profile. The
information is collected through DOH’s Provider Network Data System (PNDS).
The primary purpose of PNDS is to evaluate provider networks for these plans to assure comprehensive
health services are available as required under PHL § 4403. Data collection for PNDS is authorized under
PHL § 4403(5)(a) and regulated by 10 NYCRR § 98‐ 5 1.16(j) and Medicaid Managed Care Contract § 18.5
(a)(viii).
Health plans report other physician‐related information through the PNDS as well, including some data
that are included in the Profile. The data reported through the PNDS includes:
• Provider Site Address (PNDS includes the address of all practice sites)
• Wheelchair Accessibility
• Primary and Secondary Specialty
• Board Status
• Gender
Health plans attest to the accuracy of the PNDS data and are subject to citation and enforcement if
inaccurate information is submitted. Past audits of PNDS have demonstrated a data accuracy rate of
over 90%.

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 Using PNDS as the data source for health plan network participation information would make this
important information available without placing an additional reporting burden on physicians.
Incorporating this information into the Profile is very feasible. However, in order to ensure that it is
available on the Profile for all physicians, PHL § 2995‐a has to be modified to make health plan network
affiliation a mandatory part of the Profile. The Department may begin using the PNDS as the source of
health plan information as an optional field on the Profile in 2018.
Website Updates
Based on DOH’s review and stakeholder feedback in 2015, DOH has begun discussions with the
Physician Profile’s vendor regarding a redesign of the Profile website, including the following
improvements:
• Make the Profile website mobile friendly, as more consumers use smart phones and tablets, while
maintaining telephone access to the Profile to ensure access in geographic areas where internet
access is challenging.
• Make the website more easily identified through search engines.
• Enhance consumer tips, facts, and links to other relevant information such as the CMS Hospital
Compare and Nursing Home Compare websites.
• Create a FAQ document to address common issues, tailored for both consumers and physicians. In
particular, better explanation of medical malpractice information is needed.
• Redesign the layout to be more visually appealing and easier to navigate, including improving
accessibility for individuals with disabilities.
• At the physician’s discretion, provide a link to the physician’s website and social media accounts, or
the Profile pages of physicians who work at the same practice location.
• Allow users to view physician profiles side by side.
• Ensure that website language is understandable, especially in the areas of licensure actions and
medical malpractice information.
• Improve the search capability. Currently, a user can search by county or city, field of medicine, or
hospital, if not searching for an individual physician. Stakeholders want the ability to also search by
distance and health plan network, and want to search by a greater field of subspecialty.
Through redesign with the latest technology, the Profile will be easier to access and to navigate to
review information about physicians. The Department has already begun making changes, almost
doubling the medical subspecialties available for consumers to search for on the Profile.
Other Recommendations
The 2015 Physician Profile study included recommendations that would require statutory changes to be
implemented. These recommendations would add information to the Profile that is important to
consumers, make certain information mandatory on the Profile so that it is available for all physicians,

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 and make it easier for physicians to create and update information on their profiles. The
recommendations include:
• Requiring information that is important to consumers to be included on the Profile. Physicians
currently have the option of including some of this information in their profiles (e.g., location of
primary practice setting), while some information is not included in the current Profile (e.g.,
availability of telehealth services); and some require modification of existing Profile information (e.g.,
availability of assistive technologies);
• Requiring the reporting/collection of information important to physician workforce research and
planning through the Profile. The SUNY School of Public Health’s Center for Health Workforce
Studies (CHWS) conducts valuable research on New York State’s physician workforce that assists
policy and program development to ensure adequate medical workforce capacity for the future. The
CHWS collects information for research and planning from physicians through its voluntary CHWS
Physician Survey (PS). Because of significant, but not complete, overlap between information
collected by the CHWS PS and the Profile, adding a few mandatory questions to the Profile, but
restricting their use solely for research and planning, could remove a duplicative reporting burden for
physicians and improve the data available for physician workforce research and planning;
• Allowing physicians to authorize designees to input data into their profile on his or her behalf; and
• Improving reporting to the Profile by linking the Physician Profile and the licensure/registration
process.
• Aligning Public Health Law and Education Law requirements for updating the Profile. Currently,
PHL § 2995‐a requires each physician to update his or her Profile information within the six months
prior to the expiration date of such physician’s registration period, while under Education Law §
6524, physicians are required to update their Profile within the six months prior to submission of
registration. This slight variation in the two statutes has caused confusion among physicians about
when the Profile update is due. Stakeholders recommend that Public Health Law be modified to be
consistent with the Education Law requirement.
The Department will continue its dialogue with all relevant stakeholders to streamline the reporting,
collections, storage, and use of physician‐related information.
Summary
The NYS Physician Profile remains a valuable single online source of information about physicians who
are licensed and registered to practice in New York State. The Department of Health will continue to
enhance the usefulness and utility of the Profile, and will continue to work with stakeholders to ensure
the availability of accurate, meaningful information about physicians, other practitioners, and other
providers to patients and the public.

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