Data sources
Every dataset behind PricedCare, what we use it for, and who publishes it
Hospital price files
The prices themselves. Each hospital publishes its own machine-readable file of standard charges. We link to the file for every price we show, and we show the date the file was published.
CMS Hospital General Information
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) list of Medicare-certified hospitals. It gives us the hospital names, identifiers, addresses and states. We refresh it monthly.
CMS price transparency file index (cms-hpt.txt)
Each hospital system lists the addresses of its price files in a plain text file at its website root. We read these to find the price file for each hospital. Some sites block this request, and for those we have no file.
Hospital websites
A hospital's own website is where we look for its price file when the index file does not give us one. We record the website and the outcome of each check.
US Census Bureau geography
Core-based statistical areas (metro areas) and ZIP Code Tabulation Areas, which we use to group hospitals into metros and to find hospitals near a ZIP code. We also use the Census Geocoder to place hospital addresses on a map.
OpenStreetMap
Used to locate hospitals whose addresses the Census Geocoder could not match. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License.