advance letter

Alan Korz

The Episcopal Center For Children

5901 Utah Avenue NW

Washington, DC 20015

Dear ,

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration is conducting a national evaluation of its National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) and Healthcare Integrity and Protection Data Bank (HIPDB). The NPDB has been in existence since 1990, and the HIPDB became operational for reporting in 1999. We periodically conduct evaluations of each data bank to ensure they are meeting the needs of healthcare entities such as yours. The results of the evaluation will guide the future strategic directions of the data banks, and we thank you in advance for your cooperation.

We have contracted with The Gallup Organization to conduct this comprehensive evaluation. In the next few days, you will be receiving a phone call from a Gallup interviewer who will ask for your help in identifying the best individuals on your staff to participate in this evaluation.

The evaluation consists of three main components:

1. Reporting questionnaire (to gather feedback on the process of reporting malpractice payments or adverse actions to the NPDB and HIPDB)

2. Querying questionnaire (to gather feedback on the process of querying practitioners)

3. Matched questionnaire (to gather feedback on the usefulness of the matched reports your entity receives on queried practitioners)

You will be asked to provide contact information for the individuals on your staff who are most qualified to provide feedback on each of these components that is applicable to your organization. Once these individuals are identified, Gallup will send them e-mail invitations which will allow them to complete web-based surveys regarding the reporting, querying, and matched components of their database activity. The evaluation is conducted on a secure web-site. If you have questions concerning any aspect of the survey, including confidentiality, please call either me at 301-443-6535 or the NPDB-HIPDB Customer Service Center at 1-800-767-6732.

Page 2 – Mr. Korz

We are the initial stages of fielding the evaluation. As a result, you or your staff will be asked a few additional questions during the survey so that we can measure the effectiveness of certain survey questions.

Once again, thank you in advance for your cooperation with this request. Your responses will be held in the strictest of confidence and will only be utilized in group summaries.

Sincerely,

Robert E. Oshel, PhD.

Associate Chief,

Practitioner Data Banks Branch