Licensing a Physician Directory or Building Your Own List In-House
Each outreach campaign team must create a physician directory before its first launch. What matters is how it gets built. One option is to license one. In the second case, a coordinator would create a list from scratch using public information.
Either way, it might seem affordable to start. However, by the sixth month of the campaign, someone has to clean up records that haven’t been cleaned in half a year.
In this guide, we compare both options by time required, maintenance, fields, and cost per usable record. We also explain when it makes sense to create a list internally and when it is better to combine both strategies. For more details about fields in a physician directory, check our guide to the Canadian physician directory.
People Also Ask
What is cost per usable record?
Cost per usable record is the total yearly spend on a physician list, divided by the number of records reached without a bounce or returned mail. Lower is better.
How long does it take to build a physician list in-house?
It depends on scope. A national list means pulling, matching and cleaning records from 13 provincial and territorial registers, plus hospital and clinic sources, before the first send.
Are public physician registers free to use for outreach?
Registers are public, but each one sets its own terms of use. Read them before copying data in bulk. Privacy and anti-spam rules still apply to all outreach.
Why Teams Try to Build Their Own List First
Doctor data is public, as each province and territory has its own medical regulator who maintains an online registry (there are 13 in Canada).
A coordinator has some spare time, and a spreadsheet requires no budgetary allocation. They begin copying names.
Control is the other attractor. The team decides who gets in, what gets tracked, and how often it happens. It’s a sound methodology for a limited scope within a single municipality.
What It Takes to Build a List In-House
Sourcing From College Registers and Hospital Listings
Most in-house lists start with college registers. Hospital staff directories, clinic websites and association lists round out the coverage.
They all have their unique formats. They also all name specialties differently. Someone must manually reconcile them. For a national list, that means pulling 13 different physician directories, one provincial list at a time.
Be sure to read each register’s conditions of use before downloading its data in bulk. They may restrict use.
The Fields You Get Free and the Fields You Don’t
Registers identify individuals with a licence, their registration status, and a practice address. Many will also include specialty information.
Regulators created these registers to protect patients, not to promote sales. These registers rarely list medical specialties, hospital affiliations, or prescription rate per day. These fields allow for precise targeting. Check out our list of physician data fields.
Who Owns the Work and What It Pushes Aside
Someone on the team owns the list. It often lands on a marketing coordinator or a sales operations analyst. Every hour on data entry is an hour away from campaigns.
Ownership also walks out the door when people leave. If one person built the list and never wrote down the steps, the next hire starts from scratch.
What a Licensed Physician Directory Gives You
A licensed physician directory provides the records its agents collect and update. The team does all searching, filtering, and exporting. Nobody manually copies names.
Field Depth Beyond Contact Details
SCOTT’s MD Select profiles contain much more information than expected from a directory.
For every entry, they include the university they graduated from, year and country of graduation, degrees and fellowships, specialties and subspecialties, medical interests, appointments, average prescriptions written per day, languages spoken, and gender.
These fields are available from day one. Public registers don’t include any of these, so in-house teams start weeks behind.
Coverage Hard to Build on Your Own
SCOTT’s MD Select covers more than 91,000 physicians, surgeons and nurse practitioners in every province and territory. It also lists more than 25,000 healthcare organizations, including hospitals, health ministries and medical associations.
Pull a physician directory by province for a national plan. Pull a physician directory by city for one rep’s territory. The Ontario doctor directory alone holds more than 32,000 records, and the BC directory holds nearly 12,600. Totals like these depend on what each record represents, which explains why physician record counts differ between sources.
A national launch needs a physician database by region, one split into territories. To build one from 13 registers takes a team. Here it takes a filter.
How the Two Options Compare
Time to First Campaign
A licensed directory is ready the day access starts. An in-house list is ready only after the team copies, matches, and cleans every record. SCOTT’s MD Select also offers a free trial, so teams can test the data before committing.
Upkeep and Data Decay
One in four Ontario physicians is 60 or older. Doctors move, retire, and open new practices. SCOTT’s MD Select reports more than 3,000 GPs and specialists start practices each year.
An in-house list starts to drift the day the team finishes it. Someone has to recheck every source on a schedule. SCOTT’s MD Select updates records continuously from verified sources, licensing data, and trusted medical bodies. Read how physician data goes out of date to see what drift costs.
Field Depth and Segmentation
Segments depend on fields. An in-house list often stops at name, address, and specialty. A licensed one adds interests, appointments, and languages. More fields mean tighter segments and fewer wasted sends.
Cost Per Usable Record
The upfront price misleads both ways. Judge each option on cost per usable record instead.
- Add up everything spent in a year. For in-house, count staff hours, tools and cleanup. For a licence, count the fee and import time.
- Count the records reached without a bounce or returned mail.
- Divide the first number by the second.
The lower result wins.
Comparison Table
| Factor | Build in-house | License a physician directory |
| Time to first campaign | After sourcing and cleanup | The day access starts |
| Coverage | Only the sources your team pulls | 91,000+ practitioners in all provinces and territories |
| Fields | Mostly name, address, specialty, and licence status | Education, appointments, interests, prescriptions per day, languages |
| Upkeep | Your team rechecks every source | Ongoing updates from the provider |
| Search filters | Only fields you collect | Specialty, province, city, postal code, graduation year |
| Staff turnover risk | High when one person owns it | Low, since the provider holds the data |
| Control | Full | Your filters and exports, within your access tier |
| Main cost | Staff time | Licence fee |
When Your Own List Is the Right Call
A licence is not always worth it. Build an in-house list when:
- The target is a few hundred doctors in one city.
- The campaign needs a field no directory tracks, such as attendance at company events.
- The team runs one small campaign a year and nothing more.
One rule holds either way. Public data still carries privacy and anti-spam duties. Canada’s anti-spam law (CASL) applies to every email, whether the list was built or licensed. Check the CRTC’s CASL guidance before the first send.
Where a Mix of Both Works
Many teams do both. They license the directory for coverage and fields. Then they add their own layer on top, such as event attendees, sample requests, and rep notes.
Keep the internal layer in separate CRM fields, the software the team uses to track contacts. A refresh from the licensed data then updates contact details without erasing internal notes. Match records on a stable ID, not a name.
Some access tiers help here. The SCOTT’s MD Select Unlimited Online Search & Print tier lets users add their own notes to records.
Questions to Answer Before You Decide
- How many doctors do you need to reach this year?
- Which fields drive your segments?
- Who owns the list if your coordinator leaves?
- How often will you refresh it?
- What does each usable record cost you today?
Three or more answers pointing to scale, depth, or upkeep suggest a licence will pay off. The provincial physician directory pages on SCOTT’s MD Select show what each region holds before you choose.
Decide As Per Your Requirement
An internally built list gives control. It also creates a second job. Every register pull, every match, and every recheck lands on someone’s desk, and the work never ends.
A licensed physician directory moves that work to the provider. Teams get national coverage, deeper fields, and ongoing updates from the day access starts. For a small list in one city, an internal spreadsheet holds up fine. For anything larger, the math shifts fast.
Run the cost per usable record test on the current list. Then compare it with a free trial of SCOTT’s MD Select. The numbers will show which path to take.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it cheaper to build a physician list in-house?
Not always. Staff hours, cleanup, and refresh work add up. Compare cost per usable record over a full year, not the upfront price.
Where do in-house physician lists come from?
Most come from provincial college registers, hospital staff pages, and clinic websites. Each source needs manual matching and regular rechecks.
Does SCOTT’s MD Select let me search a physician directory by province?
Yes. You filter by province, city, postal code, specialty, and graduation year.
How often does SCOTT’s MD Select update its records?
Records update on an ongoing basis, using verified sources, licensing data, and trusted medical bodies.
Can I mix a licensed directory with my own data?
Yes. Keep your own notes in separate CRM fields, so each refresh updates contact details without erasing them.
