"Despite a spate of state and federal regulations that require more accurate health plan directories, they can still contain numerous errors and are often maddeningly outdated.... The law gives insurers some leverage to induce providers to respond, and a whole industry has sprung up around collecting provider updates through a centralized portal and selling the information to health plans. The inaccuracy problem remains, however. Health plans and providers often have outdated data systems that don't communicate with each other."

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