Practice listing terms
1. What the listing is
Every practice page on this site is built from the CMS NPPES registry, a public record released under the Freedom of Information Act, with the source and the snapshot date shown on the page. The page exists whether or not the practice claims it. Claiming does not create the page and releasing a claim does not remove it. An NPI is a billing identifier, not a licence, an accreditation or a credential, and the pages say so.
2. What claiming means
Claiming is free, and correcting anything wrong is free. Requests to change registry data are referred to CMS, which maintains the registry, and are not edited by us. What is paid for is the practice describing itself: the Enhanced listing, $99 a year, adds the practice's own description, the exams it offers, its office hours and links to its published fees and vision plans. Position on this site is not for sale at any price. It lets a person at the practice add a description in the practice's own words, the exams and tests it offers, its office hours, a link to its own published fees, a link to its own vision-plans page, a website, a booking phone and whether it is taking new patients. Everything supplied is shown in its own panel, dated, and labelled as supplied by the practice.
Prices are not editable, and neither is a list of insurers. This site publishes exam figures with their sources; a self-declared figure would sit beside them with no provenance and go stale. A plan list is worse: a patient who books on the strength of an out-of-date plan name has been misled by us, so the listing links the practice's own plans page instead and tells the reader to confirm cover before booking.
The page then shows “This practice maintains its listing”. It means that someone authorised to act for the practice has completed our claim process. It is not a verification, accreditation, endorsement, recommendation or quality assessment by this site or by CMS. In particular, it is not a verification of the practice's licensing, of the optometrists or ophthalmologists working there, or of the quality of its care.
3. Who may claim, and how we check
Only somebody authorised by the practice may claim. Because NPPES publishes no email address, a person at this site verifies each claim: you email us from an address at the practice quoting the NPI, we check it against the registry record and may ring the number on that record, and we send a single-use link valid for thirty minutes. We keep the verified address for as long as the claim is active, to sign the practice in and to send it notices about its listing, and for ninety days after release. We never publish practice email addresses.
4. What a practice may not add
Nothing that reads as a ranking or endorsement claim (“best”, “leading”, “award-winning” and the like), nothing that implies CMS, licensing or regulatory endorsement, no price figures in free text, no links in free text, no claims about individual patients or their treatment, and nothing untrue, misleading or unlawful. Saves that break these rules are rejected with the reason shown and nothing is stored. A practice's first edit is read by a person before it is published; later edits publish and are sampled. We may remove or amend practice-supplied content that breaks these terms, and we will tell the practice when we do.
5. The Enhanced listing
Enhanced listing, $99 a year. It adds the practice's own description, the exams it offers, its office hours and links to its published fees and vision plans, in the practice's own block, dated and labelled as supplied by the practice, moderated under the rules above like everything else. It changes nothing in the register record and nothing about where the practice appears in any list. We may reject content, edit it for formatting, or remove it if it breaches these terms, and we will tell the practice when we do.
One subscription per listing, billed yearly by Stripe; this site never sees card details. Prices are shown before any sales tax that applies. The subscription renews every year until the practice cancels it. Stripe takes the payment on the same day each year. The practice may update its card, download invoices or cancel from the billing portal linked on its dashboard. Cancelling stops the next payment and the listing runs to the end of the year already paid for. Cancel within 14 days of the first payment and we refund it in full. After that the subscription is not refunded in part, because the listing carried the paid content for it. There is no free trial: a trial that has to be cancelled to avoid a charge is not an offer we want to make.
If we change a price, the practice is told by email at least 30 days before it takes effect, and can cancel before then. A price change never applies to a year already paid for. When a subscription ends or a payment fails, the paid content comes off the page at the next build and the free claim is unaffected: the practice keeps its badge, its website, its phone and every correction, and can still change them.
6. No enquiries, no paid placement
This site sends no patient enquiries to practices, and it sells no position, note or placement on any page. Claiming is not consent to be contacted by us or through us. If either ever changed it would be a separate choice, off by default, with its own terms stated before it could be switched on.
7. Releasing a claim
A practice may release its claim at any time from its listing editor, or by emailing [email protected] from a work address. Practice-supplied content comes off the page at the next build and the registry record stays exactly as it was. If the person who claimed has left the practice, email us from a work address and we will transfer the claim.
8. Our side
We keep the listings current from the NPPES monthly file, keep practice-supplied content separate from registry facts on every page, and tell practices about material changes to these terms by email. We may suspend a claim while we investigate a breach. We may amend or discontinue listing features at any time, provided the core claimed listing remains available for any period already paid for. We are not liable for loss arising from the content a practice supplies, or from the registry data as CMS publishes it.
9. Law, liability and your data
These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising from them.
This is a business-to-business service. The listing is supplied to a practice for the purposes of its business, not to a consumer, so the consumer cancellation rights that apply to personal purchases do not apply here.
What we are liable for. We do not exclude liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded. Beyond that, our total liability to a practice arising from the listing or these terms is limited to the amount paid by the practice to us during the twelve months preceding the event giving rise to the claim, and we are not liable for loss of profit, loss of business or indirect loss. We are not liable for the content a practice supplies, nor for the registry data as the regulator published it.
We hold the verified address and the content a practice supplies in order to run the listing. What we hold, why, and for how long is in our privacy notice, and a practice can ask us to delete practice-supplied content and account information by releasing the claim or by emailing us, subject to legal and record-keeping requirements. The registry record itself is not ours to delete.
Questions: [email protected]. Start a claim from find your practice, or read the fuller explanation for practices. Digital Signet Limited, company 16414164, 71-75 Shelton Street, London WC2H 9JQ.