CAQH (the Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare) is a nonprofit alliance of health plans and trade associations that builds shared administrative tools for healthcare. Its best-known product, CAQH ProView, lets a provider enter their professional and credentialing information once into a single online profile that many health plans can then draw from, instead of each plan collecting it separately.

What is CAQH ProView used for?

CAQH ProView is a centralized provider data profile used in credentialing and enrollment. A provider completes one profile — education, training, licensure, work history, malpractice coverage, and more — and authorizes participating health plans to access it. It reduces duplicate paperwork across the many plans a provider may join.

Is CAQH the same as an NPI?

No. An NPI is a public administrative identifier assigned through CMS NPPES to eligible individuals and organizations; HIPAA-covered providers use it in standard transactions. A CAQH profile is a private credentialing data file used by health plans. The NPI does not itself establish licensure or credentialing.

How often do you have to re-attest with CAQH?

CAQH ProView requires providers to re-attest to the accuracy of their profile on a recurring cycle — roughly every few months — and to keep documents current. Because the data is self-reported and only as fresh as the last attestation, plans typically check key facts against primary sources rather than relying on the profile alone.

How is CAQH data different from primary-source data?

CAQH data is self-reported by the provider and attested on a cycle. Primary-source data comes straight from the issuing authority — a state license board, the NPPES registry, the CMS PECOS file, or the OIG exclusion list — and reflects the source of record. Fonteum publishes the primary-source federal layer, with available source and snapshot metadata displayed on supported fields; CAQH organizes provider-submitted data for plan workflows.

Does Fonteum provide CAQH data?

No. Fonteum does not hold or resell CAQH profiles. It publishes federal provider-data surfaces including NPPES, CMS PECOS, and a production OIG LEIE serving table that held 83,464 rows from the May 8, 2026 source release, ingested May 25, when checked July 12.

Fonteum · Learn · Updated 2026-06-21

What Is CAQH?

CAQH (the Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare) is a nonprofit whose ProView profile lets a provider submit credentialing data once for many health plans to reuse. It organizes self-reporteddata; primary-source federal records — NPPES, PECOS, and Fonteum's loaded OIG LEIE serving table with 83,464 rows from the May 8, 2026 source release — come from the named federal sources. The OIG file was ingested May 25 and checked July 12.

Source: CMS & HHS-OIG · Public DomainUpdated 2026-06-21

What CAQH is

CAQH is an alliance of health plans and industry groups that builds shared administrative infrastructure for healthcare. The problem it set out to solve is duplication: a provider who joins ten health plans used to fill out ten near-identical credentialing packets. CAQH centralizes that data so it is collected once and reused.

It is an administrative convenience layer, not a regulator or a source of record. The underlying facts — a license, an NPI, a Medicare enrollment, an exclusion — still live with the authorities that issue them.

CAQH ProView

ProView is the provider-facing profile most people mean when they say “CAQH.” A provider enters education, training, board status, licensure, work history, and malpractice coverage into one online record, uploads supporting documents, and authorizes participating health plans to pull from it during credentialing and enrollment. The provider maintains the profile; the plans consume it.

The re-attestation cycle

Because the profile is self-reported, CAQH requires providers to re-attest to its accuracy on a recurring cycle — roughly every few months — and to keep documents current. That cadence is the catch: a profile is only as fresh as the last attestation, and a fact can change the day after. This is why health plans treat the CAQH profile as a starting point and check the facts that carry risk against the primary source.

CAQH vs. primary-source data

CAQH — self-reported

Entered by the provider
Attested on a recurring cycle
Organized for plan credentialing workflows
A convenience layer, not a source of record

Primary-source — issuing authority

Straight from CMS, OIG, or a license board
The source of record for the fact
Supported fields display available source and snapshot metadata
What a checker reconciles a profile against

The two are complementary: a CAQH profile speeds the workflow, primary-source data confirms the facts.

The primary-source layer by the numbers

8.9M

Records in the public NPPES registry

CMS NPPES · Public Domain

2.98M

Medicare enrollments in CMS PECOS

CMS PECOS · Public Domain

83,464

Rows in Fonteum's production OIG LEIE serving table

HHS-OIG LEIE · source 2026-06-30 · ingested 2026-05-25 · checked 2026-08-11

Credentialing on primary-source data

See how Fonteum supplies the source-traced federal layer that credentialing teams check a provider profile against — each field stamped with its source and snapshot date.

Credentialing data →

Frequently asked questions

What is CAQH?: CAQH (the Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare) is a nonprofit alliance of health plans and trade associations that builds shared administrative tools for healthcare. Its best-known product, CAQH ProView, lets a provider enter their professional and credentialing information once into a single online profile that many health plans can then draw from, instead of each plan collecting it separately.
What is CAQH ProView used for?: CAQH ProView is a centralized provider data profile used in credentialing and enrollment. A provider completes one profile — education, training, licensure, work history, malpractice coverage, and more — and authorizes participating health plans to access it. It reduces duplicate paperwork across the many plans a provider may join.
Is CAQH the same as an NPI?: No. An NPI is a public administrative identifier assigned through CMS NPPES to eligible individuals and organizations; HIPAA-covered providers use it in standard transactions. A CAQH profile is a private credentialing data file used by health plans. The NPI does not itself establish licensure or credentialing.
How often do you have to re-attest with CAQH?: CAQH ProView requires providers to re-attest to the accuracy of their profile on a recurring cycle — roughly every few months — and to keep documents current. Because the data is self-reported and only as fresh as the last attestation, plans typically check key facts against primary sources rather than relying on the profile alone.
How is CAQH data different from primary-source data?: CAQH data is self-reported by the provider and attested on a cycle. Primary-source data comes straight from the issuing authority — a state license board, the NPPES registry, the CMS PECOS file, or the OIG exclusion list — and reflects the source of record. Fonteum publishes the primary-source federal layer, with available source and snapshot metadata displayed on supported fields; CAQH organizes provider-submitted data for plan workflows.
Does Fonteum provide CAQH data?: No. Fonteum does not hold or resell CAQH profiles. It publishes federal provider-data surfaces including NPPES, CMS PECOS, and a production OIG LEIE serving table that held 83,464 rows from the May 8, 2026 source release, ingested May 25, when checked July 12.

Credentialing data solution — the source-traced federal layer behind a credentialing workflow.
What is an NPI number? — the public identifier used on profiles for records enumerated in NPPES.
What is PECOS? Medicare enrollment — the primary source for a provider’s Medicare status.
What is an OIG exclusion? — the exclusion check that belongs in every credentialing review.
NPPES provider data — the public registry, its API, and bulk download.
NPI lookup tool — check a provider’s public NPPES record by name or number.

Reviewed by Jennifer Montecillo, MD, medical reviewer. Non-practicing medical reviewer. Review covered terminology accuracy, the description of CAQH ProView and the credentialing workflow, and the distinction between self-reported and primary-source data. Does not constitute legal, clinical, or compliance advice.

FonteumResearch Bureau. “What Is CAQH? Credentialing vs. Primary-Source Data.” 2026-06-21. Sources: CMS NPPES, CMS PECOS, and the HHS-OIG LEIE (U.S. Government Works). Available at https://fonteum.com/learn/what-is-caqh.