Federal data guide
US Healthcare Data
A guide to the federal datasets behind US healthcare — who provides care and whether they can bill Medicare, how hospitals and nursing homes score on quality, where the money and the drug spending go, who owns the facilities, and how the FDA regulates drugs and devices. Each links to a full deep-dive.
Almost everything about American healthcare is measured by the federal government, mostly through CMS (which runs Medicare and Medicaid) and the FDA (which regulates drugs and devices). CMS publishes the enrolled providers, the Care Compare quality ratings, the claim-level spending, the Open Payments industry money, and the ownership filings; the FDA publishes drug approvals, device clearances, recalls, and adverse events. Joined together they let you follow a facility from who owns it to how it performs, and a drug or device from approval to recall. The guides below group the deep-dives by theme and point to the cross-dataset analyses.
Medicare providers & access
Who is enrolled to deliver care, and who lost the right to bill.
- CMS Doctors and Clinicians: The Federal Database Behind Every Medicare Physician — every Medicare physician and clinician
- CMS FQHCs and Rural Health Clinics: The Federal Record of the Medicare Safety Net — the primary-care safety net
- CMS Opioid Treatment Programs: The Federal Record of Medicare Access to Addiction Care — Medicare addiction-treatment access
- CMS Home Infusion Therapy Suppliers: The Federal Record of a New Medicare Benefit — the new home-infusion benefit
- CMS Revoked Providers: The Federal List of Who Lost the Right to Bill Medicare — providers barred from Medicare
Hospital & nursing-home quality
The Care Compare ratings, patient surveys, infections, and Medicare Advantage.
- CMS Hospital Compare: The Federal Database Behind Quality Ratings for 5,000 US Hospitals — hospital quality ratings
- CMS HCAHPS: The Federal Survey of What Patients Say About Every US Hospital — the patient-experience survey
- CMS Healthcare-Associated Infections: The Federal Record of CLABSI, CAUTI, MRSA, and C. diff in US Hospitals — hospital-acquired infections
- CMS Nursing Home Compare: The Federal Database Behind Quality Ratings for 14,700 US Nursing Homes — nursing-home star ratings
- CMS Medicare Advantage: Plan Bids, Star Ratings, and the Federal Dataset Behind Private Medicare — private Medicare plans
Spending & industry payments
Where Medicare dollars and pharma money go.
- CMS Medicare Inpatient Provider Data: The Hospital-Level Payment Records Behind $170 Billion in Annual DRG Reimbursements — hospital inpatient payments
- CMS Medicare Part D Prescriber Data: The Federal Database Behind Drug Spending for 1 Million Providers — prescriber-level drug spending
- Medicare Part D Drug Spending Data: The Federal Database Behind $225 Billion in Annual Prescription Drug Costs — drug-level Part D spending
- CMS Open Payments: The Federal Database Behind $12 Billion in Annual Pharma and Device Payments to Physicians — industry payments to physicians
Provider ownership & consolidation
Who owns the facilities, and how ownership changes hands.
- CMS Provider Ownership: The Federal Database Behind Private Equity in Nursing Homes, Home Health, and Hospice — PE in post-acute care
- CMS Hospital Ownership: The Federal Record of Who Owns America’s Hospitals — who owns the hospitals
- CMS Change of Ownership: The Federal Record of Hospital and Nursing-Home M&A — the M&A transaction record
FDA: drugs & devices
How drugs and medical devices reach market — and get recalled.
- FDA Drug Approvals: The NDA, BLA, and ANDA Database Behind Every Drug on the Market — every approved drug
- FDA 510(k): The Medical Device Clearance Database Behind 5,000 Annual Market Approvals — the device clearance pathway
- FDA PMA Approvals: The Federal Record of How High-Risk Medical Devices Reach Market — high-risk device approvals
- FDA Medical Device Recalls: The CDRH Recall Database Explained — device recalls
- FDA FAERS: The Adverse Drug Event Database Behind Post-Market Drug Safety — post-market drug-safety reports
Cross-dataset analyses
Synthesis guides that join several of the datasets above.
- Healthcare Consolidation: Tracing Hospital and Nursing-Home Roll-Ups Through Federal Data — ownership + CHOW + quality, end to end
More guides at Federal data guides, or browse all writing and the full dataset catalog.