How to Claim Your MedXL Physician Profile

Introduction

If you practise medicine in the United States or Canada, there is a good chance a profile for you already exists on MedXL. The MedXL directory contains roughly 955,000 US and Canadian provider records, assembled so that patients, colleagues, and employers can find accurate information about practising clinicians through the public doctor search at /discover/doctors. Profiles display licence and verification information, which is a large part of why people trust the directory: it is built around who is actually licensed to practise, not around who signed up first.

An unclaimed profile is still your profile. It represents you to anyone who searches your name, and it does so without your input. Claiming it puts you in the position every physician should be in with respect to their own public record: aware of what it says, able to keep it accurate, and clearly identified as the verified owner rather than an unmanaged listing.

This guide explains the entire claiming process honestly and in detail. The short version: you find your profile, you submit a claim with supporting details, and the MedXL verification team manually reviews the claim before approving it. There is no instant, self-serve approval, and that is deliberate. A directory that hands control of a physician's public profile to anyone who fills out a form would not be worth trusting. The review takes time, and this guide tells you what to expect during it.

You will learn how to locate your listing (including what to do if you cannot find it), what information strengthens a claim, why manual review exists and roughly how to think about the waiting period, what happens after confirmation, and how to resolve the common complications: duplicate listings, name changes, cross-border licensure, and profiles that contain outdated information. A step-by-step walkthrough, a checklist, and answers to the questions physicians most often ask follow at the end.

Key takeaways

MedXL maintains approximately 955,000 US and Canadian provider records; most physicians already have a profile before they ever visit the site.
Unclaimed profiles are visible to anyone using the public doctor search, so claiming is about taking ownership of information that is already public.
The claim flow has four stages: find your profile, submit a claim with supporting details, manual review by MedXL's verification team, and confirmation.
Every claim is reviewed by a person. There is no instant self-serve approval, because profile ownership needs to be protected against impersonation.
Review takes time; plan for it rather than around it, and make sure your submission is complete the first time to avoid back-and-forth.
The details you provide should match your licence record: use the name your regulator has on file, and identify your licensing jurisdiction precisely.
After confirmation, keep the profile current; an accurate claimed profile is more useful to patients and employers than an impressive stale one.
Duplicate listings, recent name changes, and multi-jurisdiction licences are all resolvable; flag them in your claim rather than working around them.

Why your profile exists before you created it

Physician directories in North America are typically built from public and licensure-related records rather than from self-registration, and MedXL follows that model. Medical regulators in every US state and Canadian province maintain public registers of licensed physicians; that is a legal feature of medical regulation in both countries, administered by state medical boards in the US and provincial and territorial colleges in Canada. Directory records assembled around that public layer are how MedXL can present a broad, searchable picture of who practises where.

This design has two consequences worth understanding.

First, your profile's existence is not an error or a privacy breach; it reflects information that is already public through your regulator. If you have concerns about specific details displayed on a profile, those concerns are legitimate and addressable, and the claiming process is the front door for raising them.

Second, an unclaimed profile is a passive record. It cannot reflect the things only you know: your current practice focus, where you actually see patients now, and how your career has changed since the underlying records were assembled. Claiming converts a passive record into an account you control.

Who searches for you

Three audiences routinely look physicians up in directories. Patients search before booking or before a referral appointment, and they compare what they find across sources. Colleagues and referring physicians search when directing patients. Employers and recruiters search during sourcing and due diligence; MedXL also operates a healthcare jobs board and an employer directory, and hiring teams move between those tools and the provider directory when evaluating candidates. All three audiences see the same profile you do, which is the practical argument for making sure it is right.

Before you claim: what to have ready

A claim is a request for control over a public professional identity, so the verification team's job is to establish that you are the physician the profile describes. You make their job fast by submitting details that line up cleanly with your licence record.

Have the following ready before you start:

Your legal and licensed name. Use the name your medical regulator has on file. If you practise under a different name (a maiden name, an anglicized name, a hyphenation change), note both in the claim rather than leaving the team to guess.
Your licensing jurisdiction and regulator. The state medical board or provincial college that licenses you, and your licence or registration number as it appears on the public register.
Your current practice details. Primary practice location, specialty, and current affiliations, so that discrepancies between the profile and reality can be corrected as part of the process.
A professional point of contact. Contact information that supports verification is more persuasive when it is professionally anchored (a practice or institutional email rather than an anonymous personal address, where you have one).
Supporting documentation if your situation is unusual. Recent name change, recent relocation between jurisdictions, or a very common name shared with other physicians are all situations where a little documentation up front prevents a review cycle later.

None of this is bureaucracy for its own sake. Physician impersonation is a real problem online, and a directory that displays licence and verification information has to hold the claiming door firmly shut against anyone who is not the physician in question.

The claiming process from start to finish

Stage 1: Find your profile

Use the public doctor search at /discover/doctors. Search your name as your regulator records it, and narrow by location or specialty if the name is common. Check the profile's licence information, jurisdiction, and practice details to confirm the record is yours and not a same-named colleague's; with hundreds of thousands of records in the directory, name collisions are routine, and claiming the wrong profile creates work for everyone.

If you find more than one profile that appears to be you, do not claim both. Claim the most accurate one and report the duplicate within your claim so the verification team can reconcile the records.

If you cannot find a profile at all, see the troubleshooting section below; the claim process still starts from the same place.

Stage 2: Submit your claim

From your profile, begin a claim and provide the supporting details described above. Completeness matters more than speed here. The single most common cause of slow claims is a submission that forces the verification team to come back with questions: a name that does not match the register, a missing jurisdiction, or practice details that contradict the licence record with no explanation.

Write the claim the way you would write to a credentialing office: precise, factual, and anticipating the obvious questions. If something about your situation will look inconsistent on paper, explain it in the submission.

Stage 3: Manual review by the verification team

Every claim is reviewed by MedXL's verification team. The team checks that the identity asserted in the claim matches the physician the profile describes, using the details and documentation you provide alongside licensure records.

Be realistic about the timeline. Manual review means a person examines your claim, and review takes time; it is not instant, and MedXL does not offer a self-serve bypass. Claims that are complete and internally consistent move fastest. Claims that require follow-up questions take longer, in roughly the way that any credentialing or verification process takes longer when information is missing.

During the review, the most useful thing you can do is respond promptly if the team contacts you with a question. The least useful thing you can do is submit duplicate claims, which do not accelerate anything.

Stage 4: Confirmation

When the review concludes successfully, you receive confirmation and the profile is yours. From that point, the practical work begins: review every field on the profile against reality, correct anything stale, and make a habit of updating it when your practice changes. A claimed profile that drifts out of date loses most of the value of claiming it.

If a claim is not approved, that is usually a solvable mismatch rather than a dead end: the submitted details did not line up with the record well enough to establish ownership. Review what you submitted, resolve the discrepancy (or gather documentation explaining it), and submit again with the gap addressed.

Common situations and how to handle them

You cannot find your profile

Search variations of your name (with and without middle initials, prior surnames) and remove filters before concluding the profile does not exist. Newly licensed physicians and physicians who recently moved between jurisdictions are the most likely to be missing or hard to find, because directory records track the underlying public data with some lag. If no profile exists for you, contact MedXL through the claim/support flow to request one rather than waiting for the directory to catch up on its own.

Your name has changed

Claim under your current legal name and disclose the prior name in the submission, with documentation if available. Also make sure your regulator's register reflects your current name; directories inherit what regulators publish, and fixing the source record prevents the mismatch from recurring.

You hold licences in multiple states or provinces

Identify all relevant jurisdictions in your claim and indicate which is your primary practice location. Cross-border physicians (licensed in both a US state and a Canadian province, or in several US states via the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact pathway) should expect the verification team to anchor identity to at least one register and should make that anchor easy to find.

The profile contains errors

Claim it anyway; claiming is precisely how errors get fixed by the person best positioned to fix them. Note the errors in your claim submission. Do not treat an inaccurate unclaimed profile as a reason to ignore the directory, because the people searching your name are not ignoring it.

You share a name with another physician

Include enough distinguishing detail (jurisdiction, specialty, licence number, practice city) that the verification team can tell the records apart with confidence. If you discover the profile has mingled your details with a same-named colleague's, say so explicitly; disentangling merged records is a known task for the verification team, but only if someone flags it.

You are retiring or leaving practice

Licence status changes eventually flow through to public registers, and profiles display licence and verification information accordingly. If you want your profile to reflect a retirement or practice change promptly, claiming it (or contacting MedXL if it is already claimed) is the direct route.

After you claim: keeping the profile working for you

Claiming is a milestone, not a finish line. The profiles that serve physicians best share a few habits:

Accuracy over volume. Every field you present should be correct and current. Patients and referrers act on practice locations and specialties; employers act on licensure details. Wrong information on a claimed, verified profile is worse than a gap, because the verification signal invites trust.
A review cadence. Put a recurring reminder in your calendar, quarterly or at minimum annually, and after any practice change: new location, new affiliation, licence renewal in a new jurisdiction, change in scope.
Consistency across your presence. Your MedXL profile is one node in your broader online presence. Details should match across your practice website, hospital directory pages, and other listings; inconsistency is what erodes patient confidence fastest. The companion guide on managing your online presence covers this in depth.

A note on expectations: MedXL profiles are a professional record and discovery surface, not a marketing product. The claim process does not unlock promotional placement, and this guide will not promise visibility outcomes. What claiming reliably delivers is control and verified ownership of the profile people already see.

Step-by-step guide

Gather your details: licensed name, regulator and jurisdiction, licence/registration number as it appears on the public register, current practice information, and documentation for anything unusual (name change, recent move).
Search for your profile at /discover/doctors using your registered name; narrow by location or specialty if needed.
Verify the profile is yours by checking licence information, jurisdiction, and practice details against your own records, especially if your name is common.
Note any errors or duplicates you find; you will report them inside the claim rather than fixing them from outside.
Submit the claim with complete, register-consistent details and any supporting documentation. Explain proactively anything that will look inconsistent on paper.
Wait for manual review. A person on MedXL's verification team will examine the claim. Do not submit duplicate claims; they do not speed the process.
Respond promptly if the verification team contacts you with follow-up questions.
On confirmation, audit the full profile: correct stale practice details, confirm licence information displays accurately, and resolve anything you flagged during the claim.
Set a recurring reminder to review the profile quarterly or after any practice change.
Align your other listings so your MedXL profile, practice website, and institutional pages tell the same story.

Profile claiming checklist

[ ] Licensed name confirmed against the medical board or college register
[ ] Licence/registration number and jurisdiction on hand
[ ] Current practice location, specialty, and affiliations written down
[ ] Documentation gathered for name changes or recent relocations, if applicable
[ ] Profile located via /discover/doctors and confirmed as mine (not a same-named colleague's)
[ ] Duplicates or errors noted for inclusion in the claim
[ ] Claim submitted with complete, consistent details
[ ] No duplicate claims submitted while review is pending
[ ] Follow-up questions from the verification team answered promptly
[ ] Post-confirmation audit of every profile field completed
[ ] Recurring profile review reminder added to my calendar
[ ] Other online listings checked for consistency with the claimed profile

Frequently asked questions

Why does MedXL have a profile for me when I never signed up?

MedXL's directory is built around records of licensed US and Canadian providers, roughly 955,000 of them, rather than around self-registration. Medical licensure is a matter of public record in both countries, so a baseline profile can exist before you ever visit the site. Claiming it is how you take ownership of that record.

Is claiming my profile free?

Claiming your profile is the standard route for physicians to take ownership of their listing on MedXL. The claim itself is submitted through the profile and reviewed by the verification team; nothing about the verification review is pay-to-skip, and no payment accelerates the manual review.

How long does the claim review take?

Reviews are performed manually by MedXL's verification team, so the honest answer is that it takes time and varies with the volume of claims and the completeness of your submission. Complete, register-consistent claims move fastest. If the team needs to ask follow-up questions, expect the timeline to extend accordingly.

Why is there no instant approval?

Because instant approval would mean anyone could take control of any physician's public profile by filling out a form. Manual review protects you: it is the mechanism that keeps an impersonator from claiming the profile patients and employers associate with your licence. The inconvenience of waiting is the cost of that protection.

What information do I need to submit a claim?

Your name as licensed, your regulator and jurisdiction, your licence or registration number, and current practice details, plus supporting documentation for anything unusual such as a name change. The guiding principle: give the verification team what they need to match you to the register on the first pass.

What if I find two profiles for myself?

Claim the more accurate one and report the duplicate inside your claim submission. Do not claim both. The verification team can reconcile duplicate records, but it needs to know they exist, and the claiming physician is usually the first to notice.

What if the profile has wrong information about me?

Claim it and flag the errors in your submission. An unclaimed profile with errors stays wrong; a claimed one gets corrected by the person best qualified to correct it. If the error originates in your regulator's public register, correct it there too, since directory data tracks the public record.

Can my office manager or staff claim the profile for me?

The claim asserts the identity of the physician, so it should be driven by you and anchored to details only the licensed physician can properly stand behind. Staff can help assemble documents and practice details, but do not let anyone submit a claim to your professional identity that you have not reviewed.

I'm licensed in both the US and Canada. Which jurisdiction do I use?

Include all of them, and indicate your primary practice location. The verification team anchors identity to licensure records, so listing every active registration, US state boards and Canadian provincial colleges alike, gives the review more to confirm you with, not less.

What happens if my claim is rejected?

A rejected claim almost always means the submitted details could not be confidently matched to the profile's physician, not that the door is closed. Identify the mismatch, gather documentation that resolves it, and resubmit. If you believe the review erred, respond through the claim process with the specifics rather than starting a fresh, thinner claim.

Does claiming my profile affect my licence or regulator record?

No. MedXL is a directory and careers platform, not a regulator. Claiming a profile changes who controls the MedXL listing; it has no effect on your licence, your standing with your medical board or college, or the public register they maintain.

What should I do first after my claim is confirmed?

Audit the entire profile against reality: practice locations, specialty, affiliations, and the licence information displayed. Fix what is stale, then set a recurring reminder to re-review it. The value of a claimed profile is almost entirely a function of whether it stays accurate.

Related resources

References

This guide is general information about the MedXL profile claiming process, not legal advice. Licensure and public-register questions should be directed to your medical board or college.

Canonical link