NZ Doctor Register Scraper

Search and browse the Medical Council of New Zealand (MCNZ) public Register of Doctors — the official government register of every doctor licensed to practise medicine in New Zealand. Filter by name, town/city, specialty (vocational scope), and registration status to get structured, ready-to-use records: name, previous name, practice location, specialty, current registration status, and practising-certificate expiry date.

No login, no API key, no cookies required — this actor reads MCNZ's public register pages directly.

What this actor does

• Free-text name search — find a doctor by current or previous name (MCNZ's search also does phonetic matching, e.g. smith can surface smyth)
• Browse without a name — filter purely by location, specialty, and/or status to pull segments of the register (e.g. every practising GP in Wellington)
• 182 New Zealand towns/cities and 36 medical specialties available as dropdowns — no guessing at spelling
• 4 registration statuses: Practising, Not Practising, Inactive, Suspended
• Automatic pagination up to your requested maxItems
• Clean output — every field is either a real value or omitted entirely; no null/"N/A" placeholders

Output per doctor

Field	Description
fullName	Doctor's current registered name (e.g. Smith, David)
previouslyKnownAs	Previous registered name, if MCNZ records one
location	Recorded practice town/city, if published
specialty	Recorded vocational scope / specialty area, if any
registrationStatus	Practising, Not Practising, Inactive, or Suspended
certificateExpiryDate	Practising-certificate expiry date (ISO YYYY-MM-DD), if shown
profileUrl	Canonical MCNZ register URL for this doctor
recordType	Always "doctor"
scrapedAt	UTC timestamp the record was collected

Only fields MCNZ actually publishes for that doctor are included — for example, doctors with no recorded location simply omit location rather than showing a placeholder.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
keyword	string	smith	Free-text name / previous-name search. Leave blank to browse using only the filters below.
location	select	(all)	Restrict to a specific New Zealand town/city (182 options)
specialty	select	(all)	Restrict to a specific vocational scope / specialty (36 options)
status	select	(all)	Restrict to Practising, Not Practising, Inactive, or Suspended
maxItems	integer	50	Hard cap on the number of records returned (1–1000)

Example: browse practising GPs in Auckland

{
  "location": "auckland",
  "specialty": "general-practice",
  "status": "practising",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Example: name search across the whole register

{
  "keyword": "wilson",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: every suspended doctor nationwide

{
  "status": "suspended",
  "maxItems": 200
}

Use cases

• Employer due diligence — verify a doctor's current registration status before hiring or credentialing
• Healthcare directories — build location- or specialty-based doctor directories for patients
• Compliance & research — monitor suspended/inactive practitioners or track specialty distribution by region
• Recruitment — find practising doctors in a target specialty and city for outreach
• Data journalism — analyse the geographic or specialty spread of New Zealand's medical workforce

FAQ

Is this official data? Yes — everything comes directly from the Medical Council of New Zealand's public register, the statutory authority responsible for registering doctors in New Zealand.

Does this cover doctors outside New Zealand? No, this actor is specific to MCNZ's Register of Doctors (New Zealand only).

Why is location sometimes missing? Not every doctor has a published practice location on the public register (e.g. some records show "Not available"). The actor omits the field rather than inventing a value.

Can I search by registration number instead of name? The keyword field searches MCNZ's name index; it is optimized for names (including phonetic matches) rather than registration numbers.

Does the actor visit individual doctor profile pages? No. MCNZ's robots.txt explicitly disallows crawling individual doctor profile pages, so this actor only reads the public search/browse listing (which is not restricted) and returns the fields shown there. The profileUrl field links to the doctor's full profile on mcnz.org.nz for reference.

How often is the register updated? MCNZ updates the public register continuously; the actor always reads the live page, so results reflect the current register at run time.

What if my filters return zero doctors? The actor finishes cleanly with 0 records and a status message — no error — so you can safely automate broad filter sweeps.

Why do I only get 1000 records even though MCNZ says there are more matches? MCNZ's own register never serves more than 1000 cumulative results for any single query, no matter how many total matches it reports (e.g. it may say "10,000 doctors" while still refusing to serve past the first 1000). This is a limit on MCNZ's side, not this actor. To reach doctors beyond the first 1000 matches, narrow your search with the location, specialty, and/or status filters (or a more specific keyword) so each individual run's match count stays under 1000.