We checked 3,700 registration numbers against the national register

Of the records where the number on file could be judged conclusively, about three in five did not belong to the doctor listed beside them. What we found, how we checked, and what it means if you are reading a doctor listing anywhere.

Every doctor listing site in India shows registration numbers. Almost none of them say whether the number has been checked. We built a worker that checks ours against the National Medical Commission’s register, ran it across our directory, and the results were worse than we expected.

What we found

For 2,471 records the check was conclusive — the number either belonged to the doctor listed beside it or it did not:

• 994 confirmed. The number, searched under its council, returned a register entry whose name covers the doctor on the listing.
• 1,477 mismatched. The number returned a register entry belonging to somebody with a different name. About three in five.

The rest were inconclusive rather than wrong:

• 787 matched by name instead. The number on file led nowhere, but exactly one entry in the state’s councils matched the doctor’s name closely enough to be certain. Those profiles now carry a number they did not have before.
• 335 ambiguous — several plausible entries, so a person has to choose. They sit in a queue rather than on the profile.
• 143 not found under either the number or the name in that state’s councils.
• 4 struck off. Entries the register itself marks as removed. Rare, and exactly what a check like this is for.

How we checked

For each profile: search the register for the registration number on file, restricted to the council on file. Registration numbers are only unique within a council, so searching a bare number across the whole register is meaningless. Councils write the same number differently — “MP-3037” and “3037” are the same registration — so both forms are tried before concluding anything.

If exactly one returned entry has a name that covers the doctor’s name, the registration is confirmed and dated. If entries come back but none of the names match, the number is recorded as belonging to someone else, and the profile falls through to a name search across that state’s councils. Anything with more than one plausible answer goes to a human.

What “mismatch” does and does not mean

Reading the mismatches, the causes look like this, in rough order of frequency:

• Transcription. A number typed from a prescription pad, a signboard or an old directory, with a digit dropped or transposed. It then lands on somebody else’s registration, because register numbers are dense — most short numbers belong to someone.
• Wrong council. The right digits filed under the wrong council. A doctor who registered in Madhya Pradesh and now practises in Karnataka is often recorded against Karnataka, and the number then resolves to a different person entirely.
• Historic councils. Madhya Pradesh alone has three council identities in the register — the state council plus the older Mahakoshal and Bhopal councils. Uttar Pradesh has two. A number registered under a predecessor council will not be found under the modern one.
• Our own strictness. Some share of these are ours: a name written differently on the register than on the listing can defeat the match. We would rather report a mismatch and queue it than confirm a registration we are not sure of, so this number is a ceiling on the error rate, not a floor.

What this means if you are reading any doctor listing

A registration number displayed without a checked date is decoration. It tells you the site holds a number, not that the number is right, and on this evidence a displayed number is a coin flip. That applies to our unchecked profiles exactly as much as to anyone else’s.

The number is still worth having, because it lets you do the check yourself in about two minutes. Our guide on how to check a doctor’s registration walks through it, and which council to search explains why the council matters as much as the digits.

What we did about ours

A mismatched number is removed from the profile as the primary registration and kept only in the audit trail. It is not displayed, and the profile says the registration is unverified. Confirmed registrations carry the council, the number and the date they were checked. Where the register recorded the degree it registered the doctor on, that qualification is marked verified too, and only that one.

None of this makes a profile good. It makes the claim on it honest, which is a lower bar than most of this industry currently clears, including us before we ran this.

General guidance, not advice about your situation. Not for emergencies — call 108. Errors can be reported through the corrections process.