cms-hospital-compare · CMS
cms-hospital-compare · CMS
Operating Margin Distribution
Red bars indicate hospitals below the −5% distress threshold. 232 of 6,019 hospitals lack a computable operating margin and are excluded from the distribution.
State Median Operating Margin
Median operating margin across hospitals in each state — medians are used because self-reported HCRIS margins contain extreme outliers that dominate a mean. View state detail →
Data & Methodology
Operating margin is computed from CMS HCRIS form 2552-10 headline fields: (Net Patient Revenue − Total Operating Expense) / Net Patient Revenue × 100. Hospitals with operating margin below −5% are flagged as financially distressed per the hospital-margin/v1 methodology.
Fonteum does not independently rate or rank hospitals. This index reflects CMS-published self-reported financial data. Explore the full underlying dataset on the HCRIS hospital cost report data page.
Re-derive this
Every figure on this page comes from the named federal file below, as of 2024. The downloads carry the same figures in machine-readable form, so a reader can re-check the numbers against the source instead of taking them on trust.
- CMS HCRIS Hospital Cost Reports (form CMS-2552-10) — U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Download the data: Download JSON · Download CSV · Download re-derivation SQL
Methodology hospital-margin/v1 · data as of 2024 · CSV 8676 bytes · SHA-256 75af38c9ab3714d9… · the SQL download is the query these figures come from.
Cite this study
@misc{fonteum_hospital_margin_2024,
title = {Hospital Margin Gap Analysis (2024)},
author = {{Fonteum}},
year = {2024},
howpublished = {\url{https://fonteum.com/research/hospital-margin-gap}},
note = {Accessed 2026-08-25. Methodology: hospital-margin/v1. Data: U.S. Centers for Medicare \& Medicaid Services HCRIS (form CMS-2552-10)},
}Fonteum. (2024). Hospital Margin Gap Analysis (2024). Fonteum. https://fonteum.com/research/hospital-margin-gap
Fonteum. "Hospital Margin Gap Analysis (2024)." Fonteum, 2024. https://fonteum.com/research/hospital-margin-gap.
Data source: U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Hospital Cost Reporting Information System (HCRIS), form CMS-2552-10. Public domain per 17 U.S.C. § 105.
Press angle
Definitive Healthcare charges $30,000/year for their Hospital Performance Manager, which leads with hospital financial margins. This study publishes the same underlying data — CMS HCRIS — free, with its methodology and named CMS source. When a separately attested snapshot is supplied, the attestation applies to that snapshot object and does not sign the study figures. The published calculations are re-derivable from the cited CMS cost report filings.