Hospital Price Transparency File Finder

Healthcare-price researchers and compliance auditors get the exact machine-readable price file a hospital is required to publish, with its format, size and freshness verified, instead of hunting for it by hand. Point it at a hospital's domain and it finds and checks the file the way a person would, just automated.

Get clean, structured price transparency file records from hospital websites as JSON, CSV or Excel, or call it as a tool from Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT or any MCP client. Pay only for the results you receive.

What you get

One row per hospital location. Since 2024, US hospitals are required by federal regulation to publish a plain-text index at https://{domain}/cms-hpt.txt listing their machine-readable price files. This Actor fetches that index (with a www. fallback), parses each location block, and sends a HEAD request to each machine-readable file link to confirm it actually responds and to record its content type, size and last-modified date, without downloading the file itself. Contact name and email in the source file are dropped; nothing personal is collected.

Every result is a flat record with stable field names, so it drops straight into a spreadsheet, a database or an AI agent's context.

Why use this instead of checking manually

• Checks both the bare-domain and www. locations automatically
• Verifies each machine-readable file link actually resolves, and reports its size and format without downloading it
• One failing hospital website never stops the run; it is reported as "missing" so you know
• Works as an MCP tool, so AI agents can audit transparency compliance on demand
• No browser, no proxies, no personal data: a tiny cost per result

Input

Field	Type	Default	Meaning
domains	array	(required)	Bare hospital website domains, e.g. ["mayoclinic.org", "clevelandclinic.org"]. No "https://" or "www."
checkFileHeaders	boolean	true	Send a HEAD request to each machine-readable file to record its size, format and last-modified date. Turn off for a faster run that only lists the file locations.
maxResults	integer	50	Cap on location rows saved across all domains. You are charged per row, so this caps your cost.

Example input:

{ "domains": ["mayoclinic.org", "clevelandclinic.org"], "checkFileHeaders": true, "maxResults": 50 }

Output

Sample rows from a live run:

domain	status	format
mayoclinic.org	found	csv
mayoclinic.org	found	csv
mayoclinic.org	found	csv

Full example result:

{
  "domain": "mayoclinic.org",
  "hptFileUrl": "https://www.mayoclinic.org/cms-hpt.txt",
  "status": "found",
  "locationName": "Mayo Clinic Hospital - Rochester",
  "sourcePageUrl": "https://www.mayoclinic.org/patient-visitor-guide/billing-insurance/price-estimates/chargemaster",
  "mrfUrl": "https://www.mayoclinic.org/documents/price-transparency/mc-rochester.json",
  "mrfFormat": "json",
  "mrfSizeBytes": 48213765,
  "mrfLastModified": "Tue, 01 Jul 2025 06:00:00 GMT",
  "mrfHttpStatus": 200,
  "checkedAt": "2026-09-15T18:00:00.000Z"
}

A domain with no file at all still produces one row so you know it was checked:

{
  "domain": "example-hospital.org",
  "hptFileUrl": null,
  "status": "missing",
  "locationName": null,
  "sourcePageUrl": null,
  "mrfUrl": null,
  "mrfFormat": null,
  "mrfSizeBytes": null,
  "mrfLastModified": null,
  "mrfHttpStatus": null,
  "checkedAt": "2026-09-15T18:00:03.000Z"
}

Field reference: domain, hptFileUrl (the working index URL, bare or www.), status (found, missing, or unparsable when a file exists but no location block could be read from it), locationName, sourcePageUrl, mrfUrl, mrfFormat (json, csv, xml, zip or other), mrfSizeBytes, mrfLastModified, mrfHttpStatus, checkedAt (ISO timestamp). mrfSizeBytes, mrfLastModified and mrfHttpStatus are null when checkFileHeaders is off.

Pricing

Pay per event. You are charged $5.00 per 1,000 results saved to the dataset, plus a fraction of a cent per run start. Each row costs 2 to 3 requests (the index file, plus a HEAD request per machine-readable file), so the price is higher than a single-request-per-result Actor. Nothing is charged for results you do not receive. Set "Max total charge per run" in the run options to cap spending on any run.

Rough guide: 1,000 results cost $5.00 and take about 550 seconds.

Use it from an AI agent (MCP)

This Actor is available as an MCP tool through the Apify MCP server. Add it to your client, then ask the agent for the data in plain language.

Claude Desktop, Claude Code or Cursor (mcp.json / claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?actors=brightpath-data/hospital-price-transparency-finder",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" }
    }
  }
}

ChatGPT and other clients that support remote MCP servers: add https://mcp.apify.com/?actors=brightpath-data/hospital-price-transparency-finder as a connector with your Apify token.

Example prompt once connected: "Check whether Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic publish their CMS price transparency files and tell me the format and size of each machine-readable file."

Use it from code

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/brightpath-data~hospital-price-transparency-finder/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"domains":["mayoclinic.org","clevelandclinic.org"],"checkFileHeaders":true,"maxResults":50}'

Python:

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("brightpath-data/hospital-price-transparency-finder").call(run_input={"domains": ["mayoclinic.org", "clevelandclinic.org"], "checkFileHeaders": True, "maxResults": 50})
items = client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).list_items().items

Limits and fair use

• Up to 2,000 rows per run.
• Requests are paced at one per 200 ms.
• A hospital that publishes no file, or whose file cannot be parsed, still produces exactly one row so it is not silently skipped.
• One domain's failure (timeout, DNS error, block page) never fails the whole run; it is recorded as missing and the run continues.
• Only the small text index and file headers are fetched. The (often large) price files themselves are never downloaded.

Data source and legal

CMS regulation 45 CFR 180 requires every US hospital to publicly publish machine-readable price files and a standard cms-hpt.txt index since 2024. This Actor only reads that public index file and the HTTP headers of the files it lists; it never bypasses a login, paywall or access control, and it never downloads the full price files. You are responsible for how you use the data.

Support

Found a problem or need a field added? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab. Fixes for broken runs are prioritized.