Unique Physician Identification Number (UPIN) Validation Studies. Carrier Edits

摘要

The Physician Registry was established by the Health Care FinancingAdministration (HCFA) for the purpose of issuing unique physician identification numbers (UPINs) to Medicare providers. An analysis of Registry data found that the integrity of several data elements is poor. To assist Medicare contractors in improving the quality of data submitted to the Registry, computerized algorithms were developed to detect erroneous data and to identify potential cases of multiple UPIN assignment. The algorithms can be employed by contractors either at data entry or retrospectively. The algorithms are detailed in this report by text and flowcharts, and are implemented in the SAS language.