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CMS POSCMS Provider of Services (POS) — iQIES Facility Registry
U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services · Tier-2 · profile-enrichment (renders on matched profiles)
The CMS Provider of Services (POS) file is the master facility registry for all Medicare-certified providers. Published via the iQIES (Internet Quality Improvement and Evaluation System) portal, it assigns a CMS Certification Number (CCN) to every nursing home, hospital, home health agency, hospice, dialysis facility, and ambulatory surgical center participating in Medicare. Every subsequent Care Compare source family joins to this table via CCN.
How this source shows up on Fonteum.
The POS file provides the CCN backbone for Care Compare facility joins. Facility fields can render with available source, quarter, and methodology metadata; coverage varies by record. No NPI is included in the iQIES POS export.
What this source does NOT mean
The POS file identifies Medicare-certified facilities; it is not a quality rating, inspection record, or complaint database. A facility listed in POS is Medicare-enrolled — it has met enrollment requirements — but that is distinct from performance, staffing, or deficiency history.
Research and data questions this source supports.
- Resolve a CMS Certification Number (CCN) to facility name, type, address, and participation dates — the identity backbone for any cross-source join across Care Compare, PBJ, Deficiencies, and LEIE.
- Build a facility-level join engine that uses CCN as the primary key to link nursing-home star ratings, staffing data, health deficiencies, and ownership chains.
- Enumerate all active Medicare-certified facilities by state and type to support a regional healthcare capacity analysis.
- Validate that a facility's CCN is still active (termination_date is null) before joining it to real-time quality data.
- Support M&A diligence on skilled nursing facilities with POS participation dates, certified bed counts, and chain affiliation.
Dataset size: 68,211 certified facilities (Q1 2026 snapshot)
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.
Renders on profile
12 fieldsWhat we can’t infer from this source.
- iQIES does not include NPI in the POS export; NPI cross-reference requires a separate NPPES join wave.
- County field contains SSA county code (not county name) — human-readable county requires FIPS cross-reference.
- Terminated facilities are retained in the table (termination_date set) — display logic must filter by termination status for active-facility counts.
- Chain affiliation reflects mlt_fac_org_name as reported to CMS; chain boundaries may not match commercial ownership databases.
- Quarterly cadence — data lags current enrollment by up to 90 days.
Authority, license, publisher cadence.
Authority
U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
Tier
Tier-2 · profile-enrichment (renders on matched profiles)
Publisher / configured cadence
Declared or configured cadence: Quarterly CMS publisher cadence. Not evidence of the latest loaded source date.
License
U.S. government public-domain works (17 U.S.C. § 105). Federal public record. Attribution required: 'Source: CMS Provider of Services · Q{N} {YYYY}'. License ↗
Official URL
Attribution requirement
Source: CMS Provider of Services (iQIES) · Q{N} {YYYY}
What the source allows.
U.S. government public-domain works (17 U.S.C. § 105). CMS publishes the POS file as a direct CSV download at data.cms.gov/provider-data with explicit redistribution rights. Hash and manifest coverage must be read from the specific artifact; no provenance fact currently links deterministically to a signature.
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
Facility type (care-compare page)
Sample value
Facility type: Skilled Nursing Facility · CCN 555555 · Q1 2026
Provenance line
Source: CMS Provider of Services (iQIES) · Q1 2026 · Methodology cms-pos/v1 · Display rule: provider_type + ccn render on Care Compare facility page with quarter inline
Official API, bulk download, and Fonteum endpoints.
Official API / download
Fonteum surface
Common questions about CMS POS.
- What is the CMS Provider of Services (POS) iQIES file?
- The Provider of Services (POS) file is the master facility registry for all Medicare-certified providers, published by CMS through the iQIES (Internet Quality Improvement and Evaluation System) portal. It assigns a CMS Certification Number (CCN) to every nursing home, hospital, home health agency, hospice, dialysis facility, and ambulatory surgical center participating in Medicare. The CCN is the primary key used to join all Care Compare datasets.
- Where can I download the CMS POS iQIES file?
- CMS publishes the iQIES POS file as a quarterly CSV download at data.cms.gov/provider-data under the 'Provider of Services' dataset. The full file includes all active and terminated facilities. It is U.S. government public-domain data (17 U.S.C. § 105) with no redistribution restriction beyond attribution.
- Does the iQIES POS file include an NPI?
- No. The iQIES POS export does not include NPI. It keys facilities on the CMS Certification Number (CCN). Linking a CCN to an NPI requires a separate join to NPPES Type 2 (organization) records — Fonteum defers that NPI cross-reference to the NPPES join wave.
- How often does the CMS POS iQIES file update?
- CMS publishes the iQIES POS CSV quarterly (Q1–Q4). That publisher schedule is not proof that Fonteum loaded the newest quarter; inspect the displayed source or serving-table date before relying on freshness. Intra-quarter certification changes and closures may be absent until a later file is loaded.
- What facility types are covered in the CMS POS iQIES file?
- The POS file covers all Medicare-certified provider types: skilled nursing facilities, hospitals, home health agencies, hospices, dialysis facilities, ambulatory surgical centers, rural health clinics, federally qualified health centers, and others. Each row carries a provider_type code identifying the facility category, defined in the CMS POS data dictionary at data.cms.gov.
Where this source already shows up.
Related sources in the graph
- /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.