{
  "slug": "practitioner-phone-reachability",
  "title": "Practitioner phone-number reachability",
  "hypotheses": [
    "H43"
  ],
  "status": "published",
  "release_date": "2026-05-08",
  "generated_at": "2026-07-20T12:14:38+00:00",
  "methodology_version": "0.7.2-draft",
  "commit_sha": "74d262a",
  "headline": "Of 7,196,385 active Practitioner resources in the 2026-05-08 NDH release, 7,195,270 (99.985%) can be associated with at least one phone number through FHIR. Where does that phone live? 7,195,270 (99.985%) carry a phone directly on the Practitioner record; 1,788,763 (24.9%) have one on PractitionerRole; 0 (0.0%) reach one via a traversed Location. 0 of the 7,195,270 are reachable ONLY by traversing role or location (i.e. the Practitioner record itself does not carry a phone). 1,115 (0.015%) have no phone on any of the three resources.",
  "numerator": 7195270,
  "denominator": 7196385,
  "chart": {
    "type": "bar",
    "unit": "count",
    "data": [
      {
        "label": "Phone on Practitioner record",
        "value": 7195270
      },
      {
        "label": "Phone only via role / location",
        "value": 0
      },
      {
        "label": "No phone on any path",
        "value": 1115
      }
    ]
  },
  "notes": "Three resolution paths, evaluated independently then unioned: (1) Practitioner.telecom (system='phone'); (2) PractitionerRole.telecom on any active role whose practitioner reference resolves to this NPI; (3) Location.telecom on any Location referenced by such a role (PractitionerRole.location -> Location). The union is intersected with the active Practitioner set, so the numerator never exceeds the denominator and dangling references drop out. Per-path reachability at the practitioner level: 7,195,270 via Practitioner, 1,788,763 via PractitionerRole, 0 via traversed Location. Seven-region overlap across {P, R, L}: P-only 5,406,507, R-only 0, L-only 0, P\u2229R 1,788,763, P\u2229L 0, R\u2229L 0, P\u2229R\u2229L 0, none 1,115. On-record contact points break down as: phone 7,195,270, fax 2,871,690, email 0, url 0; 7,195,397 active practitioners carry any telecom entry at all on the Practitioner resource. Before de-duplication against the active set, 1,790,830 practitioner references are reachable via a role-level phone and 0 via a location-level phone. Caveat \u2014 the May 2026-05-08 release deduped Location resources sharply (-61% vs April), which mechanically lowers path-3 reachability relative to the April release; compare across releases with that in mind. Upstream context: NPPES (the source of ~90% of these fields) keeps practice phone on the practice location, not the individual, so a sparse Practitioner.telecom is expected and is not itself a data quality defect \u2014 the operational takeaway is that a 'call this provider' feature must read PractitionerRole/Location, not Practitioner.telecom alone. Full Venn breakdown with raw counts at /api/v1/findings/practitioner-phone-reachability-detail.json."
}