Multiple specialities?

[mjacksonw]

This looks SUPER awesome, and I'm really excited to see it out in the wild. Logging comments/questions as separate issues... just because issue tracking, I guess.

Perhaps provider.specialty is limiting in cases, and the provider object should support a specialties property as an array of values.

This might look like:

{
    "npi": "1234567890123456",
    "type": "individual",
    "name": {
        "first": "Sarah",
        "middle": "Maya",
        "last": "Ngyuen",
        "suffix": "Jr."
    },
    "address": {
        "address": "123 Main Street",
        "address_2": "Suite 120",
        "city": "Little Rock",
        "state": "AR",
        "zip": "72201"
    },
    "phone": "2025551212",
    "specialties": ["Internal Medicine","Pediatrics"]
    "accepting": true,
    "plans": [
        {
            "plan_id_type": "HIOS-PLAN-ID",
            "plan_id": "12345XX9876543",
            "network_tier": "PREFERRED"
        },
        {
            "plan_id_type": "HIOS-PLAN-ID",
            "plan_id": "12345XX9876543",
            "network_tier": "NON-PREFERRED"
        }
    ]
}

[greggersh]

Seems like a good idea to me, assuming doctors have multiple specialties (IANADr). Is there a controlled vocabulary for specialities? CCIIO may have something from the plan data, but I'd like to have that defined.

[mjacksonw]

The example I used is an increasingly-common dual-certification referred to as MedPeds, so they're board-certified in both internal medicine and pediatrics. Super useful for doctors dealing with adult-age patients with usually-pediatric conditions.

Neurology/Psychiatry is another common combination.

I don't know if there's a well-developed, controlled vocabulary, but I'd expect that ABMS would be the organization to lead/support it. I did find this vocabulary supported by HealthVault.

[mjacksonw]

Follow-up: CMS has this vocabulary. I believe that document is out of date, but I didn't immediately see an up-to-date source.

There are some gripes here and there about this particular vocabulary, but it'd seem to be the obvious choice for CMS's purposes.

For example:

{
"npi": "1234567890123456",
"type": "individual",
"name": {
    "first": "Sarah",
    "middle": "Maya",
    "last": "Ngyuen",
    "suffix": "Jr."
},
"address": {
    "address": "123 Main Street",
    "address_2": "Suite 120",
    "city": "Little Rock",
    "state": "AR",
    "zip": "72201"
},
"phone": "2025551212",
"specialties": [
    {
        "specialty_name": "Internal Medicine",
        "specialty_id": "11"
    },
    {
        "specialty_name": "Pediatric Medicine",
        "specialty_id": "37"
    }
],
"accepting": true,
"plans": [
    {
        "plan_id_type": "HIOS-PLAN-ID",
        "plan_id": "12345XX9876543",
        "network_tier": "PREFERRED"
    },
    {
        "plan_id_type": "HIOS-PLAN-ID",
        "plan_id": "12345XX9876543",
        "network_tier": "NON-PREFERRED"
    }
]
}

Note that the id is a string, since I've seen references to alphanumeric codes in addition to those numeric ones in the linked document.

[greggersh]

Oh hello right hand, this is left hand. Nice to meet you.

[aviars]

There is no good source for speacialty. The CMS list is very short/incomplete. Perhaps optional/only if it is listed? Perhaps leave it out?

[chezsmithy]

The CMS (medicare) speciality list is a good start and should be included, but you should also consider exposing the taxonomy code which is required on EDI 837 (claims).