Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about Indicator Health, our data, and how to use the platform.
How many hospitals does Indicator Health cover?
We cover every Medicare-certified hospital in the United States — over 5,000 facilities including acute care hospitals, critical access hospitals, and specialty hospitals.
How often is the data updated?
Most CMS datasets are released quarterly and ingested within days of publication. Price transparency files are refreshed more frequently — typically daily or weekly depending on the hospital. Financial data (cost reports) is updated annually.
Where does the data come from?
All data comes from publicly available federal sources — primarily CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services), HHS, CDC, FDA, and ONC. See our Data Sources page for the full list.
What does the quality score represent?
The quality score is a composite of normalized measures across safety, outcomes, patient experience, and process-of-care domains. It is expressed on a 0–100 scale where higher is better. See our Methodology page for details.
Can I compare hospitals side by side?
Yes. Use the hospital compare feature to view two or more hospitals across quality, financial, pricing, and workforce dimensions on a single page.
Is the pricing data the actual price I will pay?
The prices shown are negotiated rates between hospitals and insurance plans as disclosed in machine-readable files. Your actual out-of-pocket cost depends on your specific plan, deductible, coinsurance, and whether the provider is in-network.
Do you cover outpatient and ambulatory surgery centers?
Our primary focus is on hospitals (inpatient facilities). We include outpatient procedure data where available from Medicare claims and price transparency files, but we do not yet have full profiles for freestanding ambulatory surgery centers.
How is Indicator Health different from CMS Hospital Compare?
We combine CMS quality data with financial filings, price transparency, physician affiliations, industry payments, EHR data, and device data into a single unified profile. We also offer natural-language querying, comparison tools, and system-level (group) views not available on Hospital Compare.
Is the data free to access?
Basic hospital profiles and search are free. Advanced features like natural-language querying, bulk data access, and API access require a subscription. See our Pricing page for details.