Everything on a Guide.md profile comes from one of three places: a public federal dataset, the verified provider themselves, or a check we performed and labelled. A directory that will not say which is which is asking you to take its word for things, and there is no reason you should.
Where the data comes from
| Source | What it provides | How often it refreshes |
|---|---|---|
| NPPES CMS National Plan & Provider Enumeration System | Name, NPI, specialty taxonomy, practice address, phone, organisation status | Weekly |
| CMS National Downloadable File | Medical school, graduation year, group affiliations, hospital affiliations | Monthly |
| CMS Medicare Part B Provider & service public use file | Procedures performed and volumes, for Medicare patients only | Annually, as CMS publishes |
| CMS Hospital Compare | Facility-level quality measures for affiliated hospitals | Quarterly |
| The provider | Biography, services, languages, hours, website, booking links, photograph | Whenever they edit it |
All four public sources are published by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Guide.md does not buy provider data from brokers, does not scrape other directories, and does not accept paid placement inside the factual fields of a profile.
How each field is labelled
- From the registry — imported from a CMS dataset and not confirmed by the provider.
- Provider-supplied — written by the verified individual who controls the profile.
- Verified — checked by us against a named source, with the source shown.
An unclaimed profile is never presented as physician-confirmed. Where we are inferring something rather than reading it — years of experience being the main one — the page says so and shows you the arithmetic.
What the public data cannot tell you
It is worth being blunt about the limits, because they are significant:
- The registry address is the last one filed, which may be an old employer.
- A taxonomy code is a billing classification, not a description of a practice. “Internal Medicine” covers a very great deal.
- Medicare Part B data reflects Medicare patients only. A paediatrician will barely appear in it.
- Nothing in these datasets speaks to clinical quality, bedside manner, or whether a provider is right for you.
- Graduation year is published for some providers and not others, so years of experience is sometimes derived from NPI registration date instead — which understates it, and says so.
Corrections
Email support@guide.md with the NPI and what is wrong. You do not need an account and there is no charge — for a correction, a suppression, or a full removal.
- Factual corrections are prioritised over all other mail and usually actioned within two business days.
- A correction you make to your own claimed profile is permanent — no registry refresh will overwrite it.
- A correction we make to an unclaimed profile is recorded so the next import does not undo it.
- If you dispute something and we disagree, we will tell you why in writing rather than quietly ignoring it.