Quality of care and the National Practitioner Data Bank: are the two related?

As the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) approaches its tenth year of operation, it is time to review Data Bank operations in comparison to the goals set forth in the legislation that created it, the Health Care Quality Improvement Act of 1986. The goal of the enabling legislation was to improve the quality of health care rendered in this country. The NPDB was created as one step in the achievement of that goal by identifying problem practitioners who may move from one geographic location to another, thus leaving a poor performance record behind. The premise of this article is to review the contributions of the NPDB in terms of accurately identifying practitioners who pose a quality problem.