CareSet Labs Releases Root NPI Graph – the Next Generation Medicare Doctor Referral Dataset

CareSet Founder and CTO Fred Trotter

CareSet Founder and CTO Fred Trotter

Originally created through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by Fred Trotter and subsequently called the the “Doctor Referral Dataset” as released by Medicare and “DocGraph” as released by Trotter, the original dataset debuted as one of the most disruptive dataset releases in the history of digital health. It remains a game changer for innovators and researchers, as it includes both implicit and explicit referral relationships between doctors, hospitals and other types of entities.

“Medicare is the largest single payer in the United States, and the map of the healthcare system that can be generated from its claims database is one of the most comprehensive pictures of the healthcare system in the United States,” says Trotter.

Trotter’s company CareSet uses the data to help pharmaceutical companies launch new drugs, and many of the top pharmaceutical companies. “I believe this dataset should be available to any researcher or innovator that can use the data to decrease the cost of healthcare and improve patient outcomes,” he says.

The new dataset will be available free to attendees of the Academy Health conference, or for download at https://careset.com/labs. In a recent blog post, Trotter outlines “the geeky details” of the release and why it is important at https://careset.com/rootnpigraph/

While the dataset can be viewed as the defacto map of the US healthcare system, it is also the largest graph data set that is 100% available using real names (doctor names, in this case). LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter all have bigger graphs, but they are not 100% available to researchers. The original dataset is in broad distribution and in use by hundreds of companies including The Advisory Board, Price Waterhouse Cooper, and the Federal Trade Commission.

About Careset Systems

CareSet Systems (https://careset.com) is the nation’s first company with access to 100% Medicare Part A, B and D claims and enables the nation’s leading pharmaceutical companies to decode Medicare claims data to guide new drug launches.

About CareSet Labs

CareSet Labs (https://careset.com/labs) creates open healthcare datasets. We believe the release of reliable and current data is vital to the improvement of the healthcare system. Our mission is to encourage an ecosystem of innovators to collaborate and share tools and research methodologies around open healthcare datasets.

Edit: CareSet Labs/DocGraph now referred to as CareSet Journal.

Ashish Patel

Ashish is co-founder of CareSet Systems. An entrepreneur and healthcare data transparency advocate, Ashish also founded the DocGraph Journal, bringing together the Healthcare Data Science community along with Politico and ProPublica to publish data sets for scientific advancement. Ashish is currently working to decode Medicare Claims data for Pharmaceutical companies, helping analyze provider teaming, and building robust networks.