Temporal staleness
How current is the NDH? Distribution of `meta.lastUpdated` vs 30-day (CMS-9115-F) and 90-day (REAL Health Providers Act / No Surprises Act) thresholds.
Headline
100.0% of NPD resources carry a meta.lastUpdated value on the release day (2026-04-09). Distinct meta.lastUpdated values range from 1 to 5 across the 6 resource types — meta.lastUpdated on the NPD bulk public-use files is a bulk-export stamp, not a per-resource freshness signal.
27.2M / 27.2M = 100.00%
unit: count
What this means
Regulators
Compliance with the CMS-9115-F 30-day or REAL Health Providers Act / No Surprises Act 90-day update cadence CANNOT be measured from NDH bulk files. meta.lastUpdated is an export stamp, not a per-record signal. Upstream NPPES last_updated (or attestation logs) is the right denominator.
Payer data teams
Don’t use NDH meta.lastUpdated as a freshness heuristic to decide which records to refresh from upstream. Every record carries the same release-day timestamp. Cross-reference NPPES last_updated for real cadence signal.
Researchers
Any analysis claiming NDH per-record freshness must caveat that meta.lastUpdated is release-time stamping. Use the NPD release date itself as a lower bound on staleness.
Null hypothesis
A majority of resources carry a `meta.lastUpdated` within the 90-day statutory threshold.
Denominator
All resources across all six NDH resource types that carry a populated `meta.lastUpdated`.
Data source
CMS NPD bulk export (pinned release).
Notes
Per-resource distinct meta.lastUpdated values on release day 2026-04-09: practitioner → 1 distinct, 100.00% at modal; organization → 5 distinct, 55.48% at modal; location → 1 distinct, 100.00% at modal; endpoint → 1 distinct, 100.00% at modal; practitioner_role → 1 distinct, 100.00% at modal; organization_affiliation → 1 distinct, 100.00% at modal. Regulatory compliance with the 30-day CMS-9115-F or 90-day REAL Health Providers Act / No Surprises Act update cadence CANNOT be measured from meta.lastUpdated on the bulk files — a per-record freshness signal from upstream NPPES (enumeration_date / last_updated) or PECOS would be required.