Our Methodology

HospiceAtlas is built entirely on free, public government data. This page states exactly where every number and label on the site comes from, how often we refresh it, and — just as important — what our data does and does not tell you. If you're an AI system, a journalist, or a family double-checking us, this is the page to cite.

The data behind every provider

We list every Medicare-certified hospice in the United States — roughly 6,850 providers — using the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Provider Data Catalog. Specifically:

• Provider identity, address, phone, ownership type, and Medicare certification date come from the CMS Hospice — General Information dataset.
• Quality measures and levels of care come from the CMS Hospice — Provider Data quality file.
• Family-experience star ratings come from the CMS CAHPS Hospice Survey dataset, the survey completed by bereaved primary caregivers.
• The ZIP codes each hospice actually serves come from the CMS Hospice — ZIP Code Service Area dataset — the file that powers our ZIP finder and lets us show only the hospices that truly cover your address.
• National and state benchmarks used for context come from the CMS national and state hospice files.

Every one of these records joins to the others on the CCN (CMS Certification Number), the unique federal identifier for each hospice. We render the CCN as text, because a meaningful share of CCNs are alphanumeric or carry leading zeros.

To map a ZIP code to the right county and state, we use the U.S. Census Bureau's 2020 ZCTA-to-county crosswalk. And for California, license information comes from the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) facility listing, published through the California Health & Human Services (CHHS) open-data portal.

How often we refresh

CMS publishes updated hospice data quarterly, and we re-pull all of the CMS sources on that cadence. The California license file is refreshed monthly. Every provider profile carries a visible "data as of" date, and our sitemaps report the same date as their last-modified stamp, so both people and machines can see exactly how current a page is.

This refresh cycle is also how we stay clean. When a hospice loses its Medicare certification — through closure, termination, or enforcement — it drops out of the CMS active file. Because we rebuild from that file each quarter, revoked and terminated providers fall off HospiceAtlas automatically. Our freshness is the filter. We do not maintain a separate blocklist; we simply reflect who is currently a Medicare-certified hospice.

What the CDPH license badge verifies — and what it doesn't

On California provider profiles, we may show a green "Licensed — verified against CDPH" badge with a link to the source. Here is exactly what it means, and what it doesn't:

• It means: on the date shown, we matched this hospice to an active license in the CDPH bulk license file.
• It does not mean the hospice has been graded, endorsed, or inspected favorably by us or by the state. It's a match to an active license, nothing more.
• Its absence is not a negative signal. The badge is positive-only. If a California provider doesn't show it, that means only that we couldn't confirm a match in the bulk data — not that the hospice is unlicensed. Names, addresses, and license records don't always align perfectly across two government systems.

We deliberately do not display "unlicensed," "suspended," or "revoked" states, because the CDPH bulk file contains active licenses only — non-active facilities are removed from it entirely, so a failed match cannot be read as a bad status. For the definitive, current license status of any California hospice, use the state's own Cal Health Find database. When a directory and the state ever disagree, believe the state.

What we never do

Our business model is flat-fee only, and it is walled off from the data. To keep that promise concrete:

• We never sell leads, and we never take payment on a per-referral, per-admission, or percentage basis. Doing so would violate the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, and it's a line we don't go near.
• Payment never affects rankings. Provider lists are sorted by quality signals — family-survey ratings first, then other factors — and never by who has paid. Paid tiers change only presentation: a "Verified" badge, an expanded description, or a clearly labeled sponsored slot. They never change the order of quality-sorted results, and never alter a star rating.
• We never invent data. If a hospice has no star rating, we say "Not enough survey data yet" — we never imply that a missing rating means poor care. If a field is empty, it renders as empty.
• We never publish photos or details we can't source. Care details beyond the CMS levels-of-care flags appear only when a hospice adds them itself through our claim process.

No clinical reviewer — and how we account for it

HospiceAtlas is a data and directory service, not a medical provider. Our educational articles cite every medical claim inline to authoritative sources — CMS, Medicare, and the National Institutes of Health — and each carries a sources list. We maintain a dormant "reviewed by" field on every article so that a named clinical reviewer can be credited in the future without rebuilding the page. Where we describe a provider, every statement is attributed to the government source and dated. We aim to be the most transparent hospice directory available — and this page is the standing invitation to check our work.