# The disciplinary flag — what it means, and what it does not

> 1,462 of Washington's 553,932 active health care credentials carry a disciplinary flag, and 1,947 carry one marked pending. Why this site publishes the count and never the name.

## The disciplinary flag

**1,462** active credentials carry a disciplinary flag — 0.3% of the register — and **1,947** carry one marked pending.

### What the published file actually contains

One column, with three possible values: `No`, `Yes`,
`Pending`. That is the whole of it. No reason, no date, no case
number, no document, no indication of severity, and no indication of whether
the matter is closed.

So « Yes » can mean an agreed undertaking about
paperwork, and it can mean something serious. The file does not distinguish
them, and neither can we.

### Why no page here names anyone

Every page on this site publishes the count for a group and stops there.
The flag appears on a single record when you look that credential up, and
that record has no address of its own: it is drawn in your browser from the
part of the URL after the `#`, which is never sent to a server and
cannot be indexed.

The reason is not delicacy, it is accuracy. Publishing
« action: yes » against a named person, with no reason
attached, states a suspicion in the grammar of a fact. A search engine would
then rank that page against that person’s name, permanently, on the
strength of one boolean.

And note what the flag does *not* stop: every credential counted
here is **active**. Whatever happened, the Department has not
stopped these people practising.

### Where the real record is

The Department of Health holds certified copies of legal disciplinary
actions taken after July 1998 and publishes them through
 its own Provider Credential
Search . For actions before July 1998 it asks that you call its Customer
Service Center on 360-236-4700. If a decision about a person depends on this,
that is where to go — not here, and not to any other copy of the
file.

The absence of information in the Provider Credential Search system doesn’t imply any recommendation, endorsement or guarantee of competence of any healthcare professional. The presence of information in this system doesn’t imply a provider isn’t competent or qualified to practice.

**Not a consumer reporting agency.** This site
and the datasets sold from it are **not** consumer reports under
the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and must not be used to decide anyone's
eligibility for employment, credit, insurance, housing, or any other purpose
covered by the FCRA. If you need a background check, use a screening company
that operates as a consumer reporting agency.

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Página: https://credential-wa.pages.dev/discipline/
Fonte: Health Care Provider Credential Data — Washington State Department of Health
Recolha: 2026-08-20