Press & Media
Every hospital in the United States is required by federal law to publish every price it charges. Most patients don't know this, and the files are unreadable even when they do find them. HospitalCost reads the files, merges them with federal quality data, and turns the result into something an anxious patient on a phone at 9pm can actually use.
"In Hampton Roads, where Sentara Health operates a large share of the region's hospitals, prices for the same procedures are often nearly identical across facilities within the system. That pattern differs from Northern Virginia, where multiple hospital systems compete and prices vary more widely."
For any of the 100 common procedures — MRIs, CT scans, colonoscopies, ER visits, joint replacements, lab work, office visits — a reader can search their city and see every hospital within 25 miles ranked by published cash price, CMS star rating, patient satisfaction, and safety record. Every number comes directly from the hospital's own federally mandated machine-readable file or from CMS Hospital Compare.
The scale of the variation is the story. In Fairfax, Virginia, the same MRI brain scan ranges from $834 to $7,306 across nine hospitals — an 8.7x spread for the identical procedure. In Norfolk, the range is narrower but still significant. That variation is hidden from most patients because federal price transparency files are published as raw data, not consumer-facing tools.
The CMS Hospital Price Transparency Rule (45 CFR Part 180, effective January 1, 2021) requires every U.S. hospital to publish all of its charges in a standard machine-readable format. HospitalCost downloads those files directly from hospitals and parses them. Every other data point on the site comes from one of the federal sources listed below.
We don't estimate prices. We publish what the hospitals publish. When a hospital's data is incomplete, missing, or contradictory, we say so. When a procedure doesn't have comparison coverage in a reader's state, we explain the gap instead of hiding it.
Every price comes from the hospital's own federally mandated file under the CMS Hospital Price Transparency Rule. Quality, safety, and financial data come from 16 additional federal datasets published by CMS and other agencies. We don't estimate — we publish what hospitals and the federal government publish. Journalists needing specific source documentation for any claim can email us directly.
HospitalCost is independent. We are not paid by hospitals, insurance companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, or any healthcare provider. We don't accept sponsored listings or paid placements. We are not a medical advice service and do not diagnose or recommend treatments.
Every page on HospitalCost is free. No login, no paywall, no sign-up required. Prices, quality ratings, insurance rate comparisons, and financial assistance thresholds are all accessible to anyone who visits the site.
Press contact:
Richard Callaghan · richard@hospitalcost.com
Typical response time: within 2 hours during business hours, same day otherwise.
This page is available for reference but not linked from the public site. You're reading it because someone sent you the URL directly. If you're a journalist working on a story and want a specific data cut, an interview, or a quote on a deadline, email the address above and we'll prioritize it.