How this tracker is built

This page is our refresh playbook, published. Everything the tracker states is an observation we can show a receipt for; it is not a CMS compliance determination, and only CMS enforces the Hospital Price Transparency rule.

How we find each file

For every hospital we try, in order: the standard cms-hpt.txt pointer file at the hospital's domain root; the hospital's own price-transparency page; and the transparency vendor's portal when the first two fail. When all three fail we record exactly what we checked and found, verbatim, as that hospital's gap narrative.

What we record

For each capture: the file's URL, the page that led us to it, its source attribution, its format, its size in bytes, its SHA-256 hash, the capture date, and how many of our 74 tracked shoppable codes yielded prices. The hash and byte count anchor the claim "this is what the file contained on this date" without our republishing the file. Every capture appends one line to a permanent observation log, so the record accumulates rather than overwrites.

File facts we surface

MRF source — when hosting and product evidence identifies an MRF-specific vendor, we name it. Otherwise the table says "Vendor not identified" and reports only the publication context we verified. "Hospital/health-system source" means the file came through the provider's own web presence; it does not establish who built the file. WordPress, Wix, Google Drive, Box, and similar services describe how a file was published or shared, not who produced it.

CMS template version — the version the file declares about itself (a top-level field in the CMS JSON template; a metadata row in the CSV template). We record it verbatim and never infer it. "None stated" files are typically custom spreadsheet formats rather than the CMS template.

Codes in file — how many distinct standard billing codes (CPT/HCPCS) we recognized when parsing the file. Hospitals also post internal chargemaster codes, drug codes (NDC), and revenue codes; those aren't counted here, so this is a floor on the file's breadth, not a grade.

Status definitions

File found — prices extracted

We fetched the file and extracted real prices for at least one tracked code.

File found — no usable prices

We fetched a file, but zero tracked codes yielded prices — for example, a file listing internal chargemaster codes labeled as standard codes.

File located — not yet extracted

A standard-charges file exists at a documented URL, but our pipeline has not yet extracted it.

Portal only — no static file

Pricing is offered only through an interactive estimator portal; we found no static standard-charges file.

No file found

We found no standard-charges file or transparency posting; the narrative records exactly where we looked.

What this does not claim

We do not grade hospitals, compute compliance rates, or assert that any hospital violates the rule. A hospital missing some tracked codes may simply not offer those services. Capture is quarterly, so a hospital may have fixed or broken its posting since the date shown. The site's published dataset carries every number on these pages.

The wall

Payment never touches public tracker content. Daily monitor data is private and never appears on the public tracker or the free check. The free instant check reads no subscriber or monitoring data — it runs a fresh, independent public check every time.