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Merry Christmas to all.

Merry Christmas to all.

While we get a number of providers who add information to their profiles, we sometimes get a request from people who would like a profile to be completely deleted. As mentioned earlier, we view ourselves as a tool for transparency, so that's not something that we support. We certainly believe that providers should be able to hide certain information such as phone numbers. For a while, we allowed users to hide their first and last names, thinking that someone might want to correct a misspelling.

While we get a number of providers who add information to their profiles, we sometimes get a request from people who would like a profile to be completely deleted. As mentioned earlier, we view ourselves as a tool for transparency, so that's not something that we support. We certainly believe that providers should be able to hide certain information such as phone numbers. For a while, we allowed users to hide their first and last names, thinking that someone might want to correct a misspelling.

It turns out that at least one person tried to effectively delete a profile by hiding the first and last names associated with that profile. We're now changing the policy so that users cannot hide their first and last names. In the future, we might allow some variant whereby people can hide one form (in case there is a misspelling), but for now, users can at most mark something as incorrect. If you have any thoughts on this, let us know.

Medicare announced that it will allow certain organizations to use its claim database. Very interesting. Organizations have been wanting to get at this data for decades, and the Wall Street Journal engaged in a lawsuit along a similar vein.

Medicare announced that it will allow certain organizations to use its claim database. Very interesting. Organizations have been wanting to get at this data for decades, and the Wall Street Journal engaged in a lawsuit along a similar vein.

If this data were publicly available, we'd be happy to integrate it to help people find doctors. A very simple usage would be to help patients identify medical providers who have treated other patients with the same medical condition.

I had heard rumors of this earlier, and it's neat to see this announcement. A couple of questions immediately come to mind? When will this data become available? What are the eligibility requirements to use this data?

We're still improving the interface to allow providers to add information to their profiles. More people than we expected have waded through our imperfect software, and I'd just like to highlight a few so you can see what claimed profiles can look like:

Tara Nelson

Lauren Dahl

Robin Furner

Roland Biron

Sanford Finkel

We're still improving the interface to allow providers to add information to their profiles. More people than we expected have waded through our imperfect software, and I'd just like to highlight a few so you can see what claimed profiles can look like:

Tara Nelson

Lauren Dahl

Robin Furner

Roland Biron

Sanford Finkel

These providers haven't reached out to us to have their profiles highlighted -- I just thought they were interesting, especially given the biographical information that they added. If you know of a provider that would like to get known in the community, we'd be delighted to have him or her claim the corresponding profile and add information. If you'd like a blog mention, please reach out to us.

In case you're curious, yes, we want to allow providers to upload pictures of themselves. If you have other suggestions on how to streamline the process, please let us know.

Happy Thanksgiving from DocSpot!

Happy Thanksgiving from DocSpot!