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CMS Care Compare — HospitalsCMS Care Compare — Hospital General Information (data-only)
U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services · Tier-1 · research-only (never on individual profiles)
Data-only treatment: identity + hospital_type + ownership + Hospital Overall Rating for 5,426 Medicare-certified hospitals. NO dedicated brand-hub page; surfaced via audit-pack export + cross-source resolver only. POS QIES is the canonical identity backbone for hospitals (PRVDR_CTGRY_CD=01); Care Compare Hospital General Information ENRICHES POS-anchored CCNs.
How this source shows up on Fonteum.
Audit-pack export coverage + cross-source resolver enrichment for represented hospital CCNs. Buyer pitch leverage rather than consumer SEO surface.
What this source does NOT mean
This is not a hospital directory page — hospitals are intentionally excluded from dedicated brand-hub pages. Star rating reflects CMS publication; Fonteum does not independently rate.
Research and data questions this source supports.
- Build a hospital quality leaderboard combining CMS star rating, readmission measures, and HCRIS financial data for M&A diligence.
- Surface hospital CCN identity and star rating for a geographic healthcare access study.
- Cross-reference hospital CCNs against OIG LEIE and HCRIS cost reports via the CCN backbone.
- Identify critical access hospitals (CAH) and their quality performance for rural health policy research.
- Power a hospital network adequacy tool that maps Medicare-certified hospitals to plan service areas.
Dataset size: ~4,900 acute care and critical access hospitals
Per-field display contract.
Fields listed below show their configured `display_allowed` flag from the §94 provenance schema. Fields marked write-locked are captured for audit and are not rendered on profile pages.
Write-locked — captured to provenance, not displayed
5 fieldsWhat we can’t infer from this source.
- Data-only treatment; not surfaced on a brand-hub page.
- Hybrid Hospital-Wide Mortality measure new July 2025 — limited baseline trend.
- 5,426 < 13,540 POS hospital rows — Care Compare Hospitals is a SUBSET; POS owns identity.
- 47% unrated for Hospital Overall Rating in current snapshot.
Authority, license, publisher cadence.
Authority
U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
Tier
Tier-1 · research-only (never on individual profiles)
Publisher / configured cadence
Declared or configured cadence: Annual cycle aligned to FY rule changes; Hybrid HWM measure new July 2025. Not evidence of the latest loaded source date.
License
U.S. government public-domain works (17 U.S.C. § 105). Attribution: 'Source: CMS Care Compare · Hospital General Information (xubh-q36u) · Snapshot {YYYY-MM-DD}'. License ↗
Attribution requirement
Source: CMS Care Compare · Hospital General Information (xubh-q36u) · Last checked {YYYY-MM-DD}
What the source allows.
U.S. government public-domain works. Data-only treatment.
What a single field looks like in the graph.
This worked example shows the provenance shape used when a surfaced field has populated source, last-checked, display-rule, and confidence metadata. Individual fields may omit unavailable values.
Field
Hospital count + rating coverage (snapshot 2026-05-07)
Sample value
5,426 hospitals; 2,866 rated; mean 3.08 ★
Provenance line
Source: CMS Care Compare · Hospital General Information (xubh-q36u) · Snapshot 2026-05-07 · Display rule: audit-pack-only — no consumer brand-hub render
Official API, bulk download, and Fonteum endpoints.
Official API / download
Fonteum surface
Common questions about CMS Care Compare — Hospitals.
- What does the CMS Care Compare Hospitals dataset include?
- The CMS Care Compare Hospitals dataset covers Medicare-certified acute care hospitals and critical access hospitals. It includes hospital identity (CCN, NPI, name, address, type), the CMS Overall Hospital Quality Star Rating (1–5 stars), and individual measures across mortality, safety of care, readmissions, patient experience (HCAHPS), timely and effective care, and efficient use of medical imaging.
- What is the CMS hospital star rating?
- The CMS Overall Hospital Quality Star Rating is a composite 1–5 star measure calculated from 46 quality measures grouped into five domains: mortality, safety of care, readmissions, patient experience, and timely and effective care. Weights vary by domain. The methodology uses latent variable modeling to standardize across hospitals with different patient volumes and reporting completeness.
- What is the difference between a general acute care hospital and a critical access hospital?
- A critical access hospital (CAH) is a special Medicare designation for rural hospitals that meet specific criteria: 25 or fewer inpatient beds, 96-hour average length of stay limit, and location in a rural area at least 35 miles from the nearest hospital. CAHs receive cost-based Medicare reimbursement rather than the DRG-based prospective payment system used by general acute care hospitals.
- Where can I download CMS hospital quality data?
- CMS publishes hospital quality data through the Care Compare Provider Data Catalog at data.cms.gov/provider-data. Multiple dataset files cover different measure domains; the main general information and star rating file is available as a CSV download. All files are U.S. government public-domain data.
- How does HCRIS financial data complement Care Compare hospital quality data?
- CMS Care Compare provides quality and safety measures for hospitals. CMS HCRIS (Healthcare Cost Report Information System) provides the financial data — revenue, cost, margin, charity care, and staffing — for the same facilities. Both datasets join via CCN, enabling compound analysis of quality versus financial performance that commercial vendors like Definitive Healthcare charge $45K–$95K per year to provide.
Where this source already shows up.
Related sources in the graph
Per-source methodology: /sources/cms-care-compare-hospitals →
- /sources → The generated source-catalog subset — documented datasets Fonteum cites.
- /data-provenance → The provider graph — pipeline diagram, source-family clusters, field-level provenance examples, display rules.
- /methodology → Documented sourcing, publisher cadence, observed freshness, and corrections policy.
- /editorial-policy → Independence, sourcing, conflicts, corrections, retractions.