How we get this data — and what we won't show you
Every price here comes from a file the hospital itself published under federal law, passed through validation gates, and carries its source and retrieval date. Here's the whole pipeline, plainly.
The five steps
- 01
Hospitals publish their standard charges
Since 2021, federal price-transparency rules require every U.S. hospital to post a machine-readable file of its standard charges — including cash prices and insurer-negotiated rates. Most people never see these files; they're large, inconsistent, and buried on hospital websites.
- 02
We download the files directly from each hospital
No data brokers, no third-party feeds. Every price on this site traces to a file published by the hospital itself, and every price shows the source file link and the date we retrieved it.
- 03
We throw out what can't be trusted
Placeholder numbers, percent-of-charge formulas with no dollar amount, and prices that fail basic sanity checks (like a $1 MRI or a $9,999,999 X-ray) are dropped. A hospital that publishes only formulas for a procedure simply doesn't appear in that table.
- 04
We translate what's left into plain English
Procedures are matched by their CPT or DRG billing codes — deterministic matching first, with every mapping kept reviewable. Prices are shown as honest ranges with confidence levels, never as one false-precision number.
- 05
We re-audit on every refresh
The whole pipeline re-runs against fresh hospital files, and the same kill criteria are re-checked each time. If the data quality drops below our bar, we keep the last good dataset and say so rather than publish junk. Current data: 22 hospitals, refreshed June 10, 2026.
What the confidence badges mean
These definitions come straight from the pipeline that builds the dataset — the badge on a price and the rule that assigned it are the same code.
A validated dollar cash price AND validated negotiated dollar rates, all sanity checks passed.
Validated dollar rates, but incomplete — for example a negotiated range without a published cash price.
Only a dollar range could be validated; the hospital publishes formulas or sparse data. Shown with loud caveats.
What we deliberately don't do
- No out-of-pocket estimates. Your deductible and plan design change everything; pretending otherwise would be guessing.
- No hospital rankings or 'best value' badges. We show prices neutrally — cheapest is not always right for your situation.
- No ads, no sponsored placement, no selling your attention to the hospitals being compared.
- No untraceable prices. If we can't link a number to a hospital-published source file, it doesn't appear.
Data sources
Hospital standard-charge files (CMS Hospital Price Transparency rule, machine-readable format), discovered through each hospital's required cms-hpt.txt listing and downloaded directly from hospital websites. Hospital locations come from the CMS provider directory; ZIP code positions come from U.S. Census Bureau gazetteer data. Currently covering 22 Indianapolis-metro hospitals across 32 procedures.
Common questions
Why is the price range so wide for the same procedure?
Because that's what hospitals actually charge. The negotiated range shows the lowest and highest dollar rates different insurers pay the same hospital for the same procedure code. The spread is the story — it's why checking prices is worth your time.
Why isn't my hospital listed?
Either its published file didn't include validated dollar prices for that procedure (formulas and placeholders don't count), or it's outside the Indianapolis metro area we cover today, or its file failed our quality checks. We'd rather omit a hospital than show a number we can't verify.
Will my bill match these prices?
Not exactly, and anyone who promises otherwise is overselling. These are the hospital's published standard charges — your bill depends on your insurance, what's done during the visit, and separate professional fees. Use these numbers to compare hospitals and to ask better questions, and if you're paying cash, request a Good Faith Estimate, which hospitals are required to provide.