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 labeled. 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, organization 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 labeled
- 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, disputes, and suppression
If information on a Guide.md profile is wrong, use the contact page or email [email protected] with the provider’s NPI and the field that needs to be corrected. You do not need an account and there is no charge.
A provider or authorized representative may also request that a Guide.md profile be publicly suppressed.
Correction
A correction keeps the profile public but fixes inaccurate information.
- Corrections to a claimed profile can be made through the profile controls.
- Corrections to an unclaimed profile are recorded so that a later registry refresh does not simply overwrite the correction.
- If the upstream public record is also wrong, we may recommend correcting it with the original source.
- Factual corrections are prioritized over all other mail and are usually actioned within two business days.
Public suppression
Public suppression removes the provider’s Guide.md profile from public availability on Guide.md.
- No account is required.
- No paid plan is required.
- Claiming the profile is not required.
- We may reasonably verify that the request came from the provider or an authorized representative.
- Once approved, we remove the profile from Guide.md’s public directory, search, listing pages and sitemaps, answer the old address with a “gone” status that names nobody, and take reasonable steps to have the Guide.md URL dropped from search-engine indexes.
- We retain the NPI and a minimal internal suppression record so a future public-data import does not automatically republish the profile.
- Suppression of Guide.md’s copy does not alter the underlying NPPES, CMS, licensing-board, or other source record.
If we cannot verify the request or if there is a genuine dispute over authority, we may ask for additional information and will explain what is needed.