CMS is testing a range of payment policy options, including pay for performance, bundled payments, and shared savings through accountable care organizations. Radiologists can anticipate that the basis for how they are paid by Medicare will change and that they will need to play a greater role than has been required of them in the traditional fee-for-service payment system to demonstrate that imaging studies are used safely and efficiently.

The establishment in recent years of a National Provider Identifier (NPI) offers a new method for counting and categorizing physicians and other health care professionals involved in clinical care. In this paper, I describe how the NPI is assigned, the information collected in association with assigning the NPI, potential ways to enhance information on health professionals through data linkages using the NPI, and how the assessment of the health care workforce could be improved by requiring health care professionals to update their information as a part of maintaining their NPI.