Organizations in and around the healthcare industry are clamoring for more data and more data-driven insights to guide their decisions. At their core, many of these decisions rely on an understanding of the overall healthcare system. Understanding the healthcare system in turn requires an understanding of healthcare providers working in the system, as well as the organizations to which they are connected.
In this paper, we describe the specific pitfalls of existing provider datasets related to locating and grouping providers. We will also present strategies we have taken to overcome these challenges. Future papers in the series will present specific analyses we have conducted using these strategies.
