How it works
Four steps, all of them public. Nothing here relies on a business telling us anything.
We find the businesses
From open business datasets published by Overture Maps and Foursquare, never from another directory, and never from purchased scraped data.
We read their website
A clinician appears here only if the business names them on its own site. We record the page we read it on and the date we read it. Our crawler identifies itself and obeys robots.txt. See about our crawler.
We check the name against the state
Against the license register of the board that issued the credential. An NPI record is identity information. It never makes a clinic Verified; only a match to a current state licensing board record can. Where two people share a name, we decline to choose rather than guess.
We publish the evidence
The board’s own wording, the license number, the expiry date, the date we read it, and a link so you can check it yourself.
Who we check
We read the clinic's own website, identify the clinicians it publicly names, and check each one who holds a medical or nursing credential, or whom the clinic calls Dr., against the state licensing board's records. Staff without a medical or nursing credential, such as aestheticians, are not checked. We do not verify anyone the clinic does not name.
What earns Verified
A clinic is Verified when every clinician it names whom we check matches a current state license, someone it names matches a physician license, and someone it names is not named only as the medical director, unless the only clinician the clinic names is a physician who is not listed as medical director at another practice. Two more rules apply where a clinic names an aesthetician or has two to five addresses.
- Every clinician we check matches a current license. Every clinician it names whom we check was searched and matched to a current, active record at the state licensing board, checked within the last 120 days. We check everyone it names with a medical or nursing credential, and everyone it calls Dr. A credential the national registry or a state register supplied for that person counts here beside one the clinic printed. A clinician we could not match, or could not search, holds the clinic at Partly checked.
- A physician license is matched. Someone it names is matched to a physician license, whether or not the clinic prints MD or DO beside that person's name, and whether or not the clinic prints a credential for them at all. A nurse practitioner or physician assistant titled medical director is not counted as the physician. A job title makes nobody a physician; a physician license does.
- Not only a medical director. Someone it names is not named only as the medical director (a clinician whose role is not stated counts). A physician matched to a physician license who is the only clinician the clinic names counts here even when named only as the medical director, unless that physician is listed as medical director at another practice. A physician listed as medical director at more than one practice is not counted as the injector at any clinic. One physician can meet the first three rules.
- Aestheticians. Where a clinic names an aesthetician, facial specialist or cosmetologist, that person counts as checked only if the clinic prints a medical or nursing credential for them or the national registry identified them; a license matched to their name alone is not enough. A clinic naming one who is not checked that way is Verified only if it also names a nurse.
- Clinics with two to five addresses. Where a clinic has two to five addresses and its website does not say which address each clinician works at, each address is judged on its own state's records: every clinician listed there whom we check must match a current license in that state, whatever another state's records say, and a physician must match one there. A physician the website names whom no register in any state identified is not listed at an address and does not count against it.
You can run the same check on any clinician yourself: how to check an injector’s license yourself.
What a status does not mean
A current license means a state board has not withdrawn it. It is a floor, not a recommendation, and it says nothing about the quality or outcome of a treatment. The methodology sets out the limits in full.