Browse PlainHospital
This index spans all 5,426 Medicare-certified hospitals tracked by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) as of March 2026, see our methodology.
Every corner of the PlainHospital corpus in one directory, hospitals, states, rankings, FDA device data, VA facilities, and the guides that explain how to read the numbers.
Methodology
PlainHospital reproduces public data without editorial reweighting. Hospital quality comes from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Hospital Compare program, patient-experience scores from the HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) survey, and healthcare-associated infection rates from CDC NHSN reporting carried through to the CMS release. Medical-device safety aggregates are drawn from the FDA MAUDE database through the openFDA API, and VA facility metrics come from VA SAIL composite scores plus the VA Access to Care wait-time program.
Star ratings, quality measures, infection ratios, and patient-experience percentages are shown as published by the agency. Data-refresh dates appear on every detail page. For a complete write-up of how CMS star ratings are calculated, which measure groups feed them, and the limitations of raw adverse-event counts, see our full methodology.
How the PlainHospital Corpus Is Organized
The directory above groups every page on the site into the small set of views that visitors actually use. Hospital-level pages carry the per-facility detail, Medicare ID, ownership type, beds, services, and the published quality measures. State pages roll those up so you can compare statewide averages, star-rating distributions, and the share of facilities reporting healthcare-associated infections above or below the national benchmark. Rankings expose specific cuts of the data, best-rated, safest, best patient experience, birthing-friendly designation, using only the metrics CMS publishes. The medical-device and manufacturer pages cover a different upstream entirely (FDA MAUDE), and the VA pages cover veterans' facilities (VA SAIL and VA Access to Care).
What You Can Do From Here
Most visits start with one of three questions: (1) What is the quality picture for a specific hospital? - start at the hospitals directory or use the compare tool with two facility names. (2) How does my state compare on hospital quality? - the states view ranks every state by average rating, five-star count, and emergency-department coverage. (3) Which facilities are safest, or have the best patient experience? - the rankings view exposes pre-computed leaderboards on the metrics CMS publishes. None of these views invent a composite "overall best" number. We let the agency-published metrics speak for themselves, and we link back to the source dataset on every page so readers can verify.
What the Site Will Not Do
PlainHospital is a data-presentation site, not a medical-advice site. We do not interpret a low star rating as evidence of unsafe care, we do not interpret a high adverse-event count for a manufacturer as evidence of a defective product, and we do not endorse or discourage any specific facility or treatment. Hospital quality is multidimensional, staffing, case-mix, geography, payer-mix, and patient acuity all shape the published numbers, and a single ranked list cannot capture every dimension. If you are making a healthcare decision, the agency-published data here is a useful starting input but should be combined with referrals from your physician, your insurer's network, and your own conversation with the facility. Our role is to make the public data discoverable and verifiable, not to substitute for clinical judgment.
Updates, Corrections, and Source Currency
CMS Hospital Compare publishes refreshes on a quarterly cadence, FDA MAUDE updates monthly, and VA SAIL updates annually. Every detail page on PlainHospital carries a "data vintage" timestamp showing which release the displayed numbers come from. When the upstream releases a correction or restatement, the next refresh pulls it through. If you spot a value on PlainHospital that diverges from the official source, for example, an updated star rating on CMS care-compare that has not yet rolled into our copy, please write to us via the contact page with the specific facility CCN and the metric in question, and we will investigate within the next refresh cycle.
How Hospitals Are Categorized
The hospitals directory exposes the full Medicare-certified hospital population, short-term acute-care hospitals, critical-access hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, rehabilitation hospitals, long-term care hospitals, and children's hospitals, using the facility-type classification CMS publishes alongside each Hospital Compare record. Ownership type (government, private not-for-profit, private for-profit, physician-owned) is shown as supplied by CMS. Bed counts and service capabilities (emergency department, intensive care, obstetric services) are reported as the agency publishes them and may lag real-world capacity changes by one refresh cycle. We do not infer service availability from facility-type alone, a facility shown as "no emergency department" reflects CMS's record, which may differ from local signage if the facility recently re-classified or restructured.
A Note on Comparing Hospitals
The compare tool surfaces two facilities side-by-side on the metrics CMS publishes, overall star rating, patient-experience top-box, the HAI standardized infection ratio set, readmission, mortality, and the maternal-care designation. When you compare two hospitals, you are comparing them on the agency-published metrics only, not on the lived experience of being a patient there, not on the specific clinician you would see, and not on how well the facility handles your particular condition. A small community hospital with strong patient-experience scores and a large academic medical center with a more complex case-mix can both be excellent at what they do; the published metrics tell only a slice of that story. Use the compare tool to surface differences worth a closer look, then read the per-facility detail pages and discuss with a clinician before drawing conclusions.