LymeHQ · Verification

A badge is only worth what it is evidence of

Two tables, one rule, and a verdict nobody can issue about themselves. This page sets out how verification works, what a badge is evidence of, and — the half usually left out — what it cannot tell you.

Where this stands today

The directory is live, and the one thing a badge means is narrower than the word suggests. An administrator reviews what a clinician has submitted and records a verdict; a listing appears publicly only once that verdict exists and names the person who made it. Everything else on a listing — specialty, credentials, society membership, and which states they are licensed in — is what the clinician told us.

Nothing here checks a licence against a registry. No part of this system talks to one. So an approval records that a named person looked at a document and was satisfied by it, which is a real fact with a real trail behind it, and is not the same as a licence having been confirmed by an authority. We would rather say that than let the word “verified” do work it has not earned.

One screen is still missing: a clinician cannot yet submit their own evidence through this site. Until that is built, the documents an administrator reviews are placed there by us.

01 · The idea

A document is not a decision

Keeping them apart is the whole design.

Most verification systems store a boolean. Someone checks something, ticks a box, and six months later nobody can say what was checked, by whom, or whether it is still true. Here the two things are stored separately, because they are two different kinds of fact with two different expiry behaviours.

  • Evidence

    A registry record, a licence document, a certificate

    A snapshot of something that was true when it was fetched. It can be re-fetched, it can go stale, and it can be wrong without anyone lying — a licence lapses on a date nobody told us about.

    Evidence cannot be edited once submitted. A correction is a new submission, so the record shows what was actually offered rather than what it was later tidied into.

  • An attestation

    A named person deciding that the evidence supports verification

    A judgement made at a moment, by someone, on a basis. That is a different kind of fact from a document, and collapsing the two is how a badge comes to mean nothing.

    Every verdict is appended to a trail that cannot be updated or deleted, and names who made it. A badge with no attester is decoration.

02 · The refusals

What the system will not let anyone do

Stated as refusals, because a guarantee is only as good as the thing it forbids.

  • A clinician cannot verify themselves

    Not by editing their listing, not by submitting a document, not by any route. The fields that carry a verdict are withheld from everything a clinician can write, and a database rule pins them to their starting value for anyone who is not an administrator. The owner of a listing is a clinician, so exempting the role would have exempted exactly the person the rule is for.

  • A verdict cannot cite someone else’s paperwork

    An approval that names a document has to name a document belonging to that clinician. An attestation about the wrong person wearing a valid identity is the failure mode worth designing against.

  • A verdict and its badge are written together or not at all

    The badge on a listing is a convenience derived from the trail, not the truth. They are written in one transaction: a badge without its event would be an attestation with no attester, and an event without the badge would be a verdict the product never shows.

  • Verification can be withdrawn, and the history stays

    A lapsed certificate or a board action clears the badge and appends a revocation. Nothing is erased, because the point of a trail is that it survives the thing it recorded.

03 · The limits

What a badge would and would not tell you

Both halves matter, and the second half is the one usually left out.

A verified badge means one specific thing: a named person at LymeHQ looked at evidence of a licence and recorded that they were satisfied by it, and that record can be produced. It is context, not authority.

  • It says nothing about whether a clinician is right for you, or good at treating tick-borne illness. We have no way to assess that and will not imply we do.
  • Which states a clinician says they are licensed in is, today, something they type about themselves. Treat it as a starting point for a conversation, not as a checked fact.
  • A badge changes how a comment reads, never what an account can do. No verified clinician on LymeHQ gives individualised medical advice through this platform, because nobody here does.
  • The clinician you actually see carries clinical and legal responsibility for your care. LymeHQ is the connector and never the counterparty.

What to do in the meantime

The directory is public, free, and needs no account — and it is short, so it also points at the organisations that maintain the large referral lists. An external referral beats a waitlist, and licensure — a clinician being licensed where you are — is usually the constraint that decides who you can actually see.

Where to go next