NPI Lookup?

Hey guys,

Has anyone found a way too intergrate NPI lookup in the translator?

There’s a public API for the NPI registry, and it’s pretty easy to use. The sample below is using data from a physician in my home town, and it’s all publicly accessible information.

From a translator, you can grab a physician’s NPI with only a few identifiers and a couple of lines of code:

   local params = {first_name = 'roy',
      last_name = 'nakamura',
           city = 'brunswick',
          state = 'me'}
   local url = 'https://npiregistry.cms.hhs.gov/api/'
   local body = net.http.get{url=url,parameters=params,live=true}
   local res = json.parse{data=body}
   trace(res)
   -- there could be multiple results depending on the search criteria
   for i=1,#res.results do
      local npi = res.results[i].number
      trace(npi)
      -- do something with the NPI number
   end

You can play with the form at https://npiregistry.cms.hhs.gov/api/demo. It will build a link that you can decompose into the url (preceding the question mark) and parameter section (following the question mark) of the request.

If you’re looking up by number to get other identifying data, the parameter value is even simpler:

local params = {number = '1265487516'}

And you can grab whatever information you need from the JSON payload returned:

   for i=1,#res.results do
      local basic = res.results[i].basic
      local last  = basic.last_name
      local first = basic.first_name
      trace(last,first)
   end

Jeff Drumm ◊ VP and COO ◊ HICG, LLC. ◊ http://www.hicgrp.com

Thank you!