Medicare Care Compare
Care Compare is Medicare’s consumer tool for finding and comparing different types of Medicare providers — such as physicians, hospitals, and nursing homes — with maps and filters.
Last reviewed against the CMS and HRSA pages linked on this page on .
The short answer
Use Care Compare (opens in a new tab) to look up a provider as a patient or family member. If you want the underlying data in bulk — for research or analysis — use the Provider Data Catalog, where CMS publishes downloadable datasets and an API.
Two front doors to the same CMS data
| Care Compare | Provider Data Catalog | |
|---|---|---|
| Who it is for | Patients, families, caregivers | Researchers, analysts, developers |
| How you use it | Search, maps, filters, side-by-side comparison | Dataset search, downloads, API |
| Where | medicare.gov/care-compare | data.cms.gov/provider-data |
What to keep in mind
- Care Compare covers Medicare providers. A provider who does not take Medicare may not appear.
- Quality measures and ratings are calculated by CMS under its own methodology, which the site documents.
- Confirm network status and availability with the provider and your plan; Care Compare is not an appointment system.
Common questions
- Is Care Compare free?
- Yes. It is a public Medicare.gov tool.
- Can I download Care Compare data?
- Yes, through CMS’s Provider Data Catalog at data.cms.gov/provider-data, which offers dataset downloads and an API.
Sources
- Care Compare (opens in a new tab) — Medicare.gov (CMS)
- Provider Data Catalog (opens in a new tab) — Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)
Questions about this domain
Questions about clinicdata.org, or a correction to a dataset description. ClinicData.org does not publish, sell, or license any dataset. Everything described here is free from the government publisher, and you should get it from them directly. There is no sample file or data access to request.
Get in touch
Last reviewed against the CMS and HRSA pages linked on this page on .
If a publisher has changed a tool or file described here, tell us and we will update the page.