Plans are required to verify provider directory information at regular intervals and to remove or suppress listings they cannot verify. Those periodic emails and calls asking you to confirm your address, phone number and whether you are accepting new patients are a compliance obligation on the plan, and non-response has consequences for you.
The requests look like administrative noise. They are the visible edge of a regulatory requirement with real consequences on both sides.
Why the rules exist
Directories were unreliable enough that patients regularly booked with providers who had moved, closed their panels or left the network.
Rules now require plans to verify data at intervals, to act on what they cannot verify, and in some cases to protect patients who relied on an inaccurate listing.
The verification cadence
Frequent reverification, commonly quarterly for key elements, is the norm across programs.
Different payers ask in different ways — portal attestations, emails, phone calls — and each has its own deadline.
What happens when you do not respond
Plans may suppress or remove the listing. Removal does not end your contract, but it ends the flow of patients who find providers by searching.
For practices that depend on directory discovery, that is a quiet and substantial revenue effect.
The elements that matter
Address and suite, telephone number, whether you accept new patients, specialty, languages, and which networks and products you participate in.
The new patient flag is the one most often stale and the one patients rely on most.
Patient protections
Where a patient reasonably relies on an inaccurate directory listing, cost-sharing protections can apply and the plan absorbs the difference.
Plans push that exposure back through their contracts, which is why the verification requests are insistent.
Multiple locations, multiple listings
Each location is a separate directory entry, and closing a site without updating every payer leaves patients calling an empty office.
Adding a location has the mirror problem: patients cannot find a site nobody was told about.
Assign the responsibility
These requests arrive continuously from many payers and are easily lost in a shared inbox.
One owner, one calendar, and one record of what was confirmed and when turns it into a manageable routine.
Keep a source of truth
A single internal document of current directory data for every provider and location, updated when anything changes.
Answering every payer from it keeps the listings consistent, which is the whole point of the exercise.
Use it as a check
Search your own listings in each plan’s public directory once a quarter.
It is the fastest way to find a wrong phone number, a closed panel flag you did not set, or a network you thought you had joined.
Common questions
- Why do payers keep asking me to confirm my information?
- Federal and state requirements oblige plans to verify directory data periodically and to act when they cannot.
- What happens if I do not respond?
- Plans can suppress or remove your listing, which means patients searching the directory do not find you.
- How often is verification required?
- Commonly every ninety days for some data elements, with variations by program and state.
- What information matters most?
- Practice address, phone number, whether you are accepting new patients, specialty, and network participation status.
- Does an inaccurate directory affect patients?
- Yes. Patients who rely on an inaccurate listing may have cost-sharing protections, which is precisely why the rules exist.
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