How we collect, process, and present hospital pricing data from official CMS-mandated sources
All pricing data on Aphenos comes from legally-mandated public disclosures, not estimates or surveys.
Since January 2021, the CMS Hospital Price Transparency Rule requires all hospitals to publish their standard charges in machine-readable format.
Learn more at CMS.govHospitals publish JSON or CSV files containing gross charges, discounted cash prices, and payer-specific negotiated rates for all items and services.
Strengthened transparency requirements and added consumer protections against surprise medical bills.
Learn more at CMS.govRaw hospital files are messy. We transform them into clear, searchable pricing information.
We download machine-readable files directly from hospital websites. Each hospital publishes pricing data in their own format.
Our unified processor standardizes diverse file formats (JSON, CSV, pipe-delimited) into a consistent schema with procedure codes, descriptions, and prices.
Data quality checks identify anomalies, missing fields, and outliers. We verify procedure codes against standard CPT/HCPCS references.
Validated data is indexed in our search engine with medical synonyms, enabling searches like "knee surgery" to match "Total Knee Arthroplasty".
Every procedure is validated against CPT/HCPCS code standards
Prices outside expected ranges are flagged for manual review
Every price links back to the original hospital disclosure file
We re-process hospital files as they publish updates
We believe in transparency about our transparency. Reach out if you have questions about our methodology.