About CareTransparency
Our mission: Help families make better healthcare decisions by translating official government data into plain-English comparisons anyone can understand.
Why we exist
Choosing a hospital or nursing home is one of the most stressful decisions families face. You're responsible for someone you love. You need answers fast. And the data that's supposed to help — government spreadsheets, clinical jargon, buried inspection reports — makes everything harder.
We built CareTransparency to fix that. We take official federal healthcare data and answer the questions families actually ask: Is this emergency room fast? Does this nursing home have enough registered nurses? How does this facility compare to others nearby?
What we publish
We maintain detailed pages for every U.S. hospital and nursing home that reports data to Medicare. Each page answers decision-focused questions using state-level comparisons (not national averages) to keep things fair.
For hospitals
- Emergency room wait times (arrival to seeing a clinician)
- How they compare to other hospitals in the same state
- Safety indicators and patient experience ratings
- Nearby faster alternatives when available
For nursing homes
- Registered Nurse (RN) staffing levels per resident per day
- Total nursing staff hours (RNs, LPNs, CNAs combined)
- How they rank among nursing homes in the same state
- Quality ratings and inspection context
We also publish state pages with top-10 highlights, searchable directories, and periodic reports (like emergency room wait times by state) with downloadable data.
How we compare facilities
State-level comparisons only. We never compare a California hospital to a Texas hospital, or a Florida nursing home to a Nebraska nursing home. States have different patient populations, regulations, and healthcare systems. Fair comparisons happen within states.
When you see "15% faster than the California average" or "Ranked #12 of 89 Nebraska nursing homes," those comparisons use only facilities in that state. We explain the full methodology, including how we calculate ranks and percentiles, on our Methodology page.
Data sources & updates
Official federal data only. Every metric comes from government sources, primarily the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). We don't accept facility-submitted data, private ratings, or sponsored content.
Monthly refresh schedule. We update the site monthly with the latest available data. Every page shows "Last updated: November 2025" so you know how current the information is. Data release schedules vary by dataset, so some metrics may be 1-3 months behind real-time.
For detailed source documentation, see our Methodology: Sources section.
Independence & funding
We are independent. CareTransparency is not affiliated with Medicare, CMS, HHS, or any hospital or nursing home chain. We don't accept sponsored placements, paid rankings, or facility partnerships. No one can pay to improve their page or hide negative information.
Why we show ads. Collecting, processing, and publishing 16,000+ pages of healthcare data every month costs money. To keep this information free and accessible to everyone, we display exactly two ad placements on facility pages and reports. We block intrusive formats, and we never place ads on policy pages like this one.
For more details, see our Privacy policy and Disclaimer.
Corrections & feedback
We work hard to ensure accuracy, but errors happen. If you spot incorrect facility details, outdated metrics, or broken links, we want to know. Our Corrections policy explains how to report issues and what happens next.
Questions or corrections?
Who we're built for
Our primary audience is adult children choosing nursing homes for elderly parents. Our secondary audience is families researching hospitals for urgent but non-emergency care decisions.
If you're stressed, overwhelmed, and terrified of making the wrong choice — you're exactly who we built this for. We can't make the decision for you, but we can give you clear, honest information to help you choose wisely.