NPPES Download Underway

Just got a note from Pat Peyton at CMS that the NPPES database is available for download.  I'm crossing my fingers as the 260MB zip file bounces its way through routers and gateways to my little bitty hard drive.

Look here for the file: http://nppesdata.cms.hhs.gov/cms_NPI_files.html

Specifications and documentation are here: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalProvIdentStand/06a_DataDissemination.asp

I've added a list of these and other helpful NPI Data links in the right margin.

The download is finished.  Time to play!

Comments

[Darrell Pruitt]

I wish you luck. Darrell Pruitt DDS

[Wyatt York]

Wondering if you have had any more luck than I have with processing this file?? There seem to be lines with unparseable data - MS Access seems to get by this but cannot process the entire file due to it's 2gb database size limitation (the uncompressed files wound up being about 1.8gb of text alone).
SQL Server 2005 fails on line 54772-54773. If I edit the file (nearly impossible due to size) and remove a few lines, I can get past 54773 but then get fatal errors further in.
I'd like to know if others are also having difficulty??

[Frank Alabau]

I am having the same issue. I tried to do a Bulk Insert with the file, but SQL server stops processing after 170,000 rows. Have you had any success?

Frank

[J Caldwell]

I also tried to import the NPPES table into Access without success. It appears to be too large to import into Access. But I was able to open it using the "Link Tables" option under "Get External Data". The entire table was visible and I was able to run a query against it.
The Link Tables option keeps the data and the structure/overhead separate allowing somewhat larger tables to open in Access which ordinarily has a 2 GB limit.

[Ron]

Has anyone successfully processed the newer larger files into a Sql Database? I wrote a program to extract only Ohio providers so that I could get the total size down to a manageable amount, but Access threw a fit over the import due to bad data on numerous rows. Also, spot checking seemed to show serious data validity issues between our Ohio legacy number and the NPI number - legacy number mapped to one doc, and the NPI number (those we already had on file) mapped to a different provider. Help?

Ron Kincaid, humble govt servant

[Michael Christopher]

Three main points: 1) The new NPPES format has 314 columns, and Access all the way through Acc2007 can accept only 255 column imports. 2) BEFORE importing into Access, change all numeric data types (EXCEPT date fields) to Text, and abbreviate column headers, removing all the crap in parentheses. 3) In Access import wizard, make sure the field types are all set to Text (INCLUDING date fields). There's actually (quite) a bit more to it than that, but this may help. We have solved the problem of getting NPPES into Access -- no small feat! Glad to help more if you need it, as part of our nifty little $500 NPI consulting package. See http://npihelp.hittransition.com.

[Michael Christopher]

I think I left some ambiguity... Before trying to import into Access, you have to remove at least 59 of the columns (or split into separate import files), and in order to avoid data type errors you have to make an Excel 2007 file with all fields (except date fields) explicitely set to Text type. Import the .xlsx file, not the csv.