Turquoise Health / Hospital Price Transparency Scraper

Scrape hospital procedure pricing data from CMS Hospital Price Transparency — the same public dataset that powers Turquoise Health's aggregation platform. All US hospitals are required by CMS law (effective January 1, 2021) to publish their pricing data publicly.

Data Source Note

Turquoise Health's UI (turquoise.health) requires login for their aggregated interface. This actor uses the same underlying source: the CMS public Hospital Price Transparency dataset available at data.cms.gov, which is the mandated public data that Turquoise Health and similar aggregators ingest. No API key or login required.

What data does it collect?

• Procedure name and CPT/billing code
• Hospital name, address, city, state, ZIP code
• Cash/self-pay price
• Negotiated/payer-specific charges
• Minimum and maximum negotiated prices
• Payer name and insurance plan
• Inpatient/outpatient setting

Modes

Mode	Description
searchProcedures	Search procedures by name or CPT code across hospitals
hospitalPrices	Get pricing for a specific hospital
searchHospitals	Search hospitals by name or state

Input

{
  "mode": "searchProcedures",
  "procedureName": "MRI brain",
  "state": "CA",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Input fields

Field	Type	Description
mode	string (required)	One of searchProcedures, hospitalPrices, searchHospitals
procedureName	string	Medical procedure name to search
cptCode	string	CPT/HCPCS procedure code
hospitalName	string	Hospital name or partial name
state	string	2-letter US state code
maxItems	integer	Max records to return (default: 20, max: 1000)

Output

{
  "procedureName": "MRI Brain with Contrast",
  "cptCode": "70553",
  "codeType": "CPT",
  "hospitalName": "UCLA Medical Center",
  "city": "Los Angeles",
  "state": "CA",
  "zipCode": "90095",
  "cashPrice": 1500.00,
  "negotiatedPrice": 850.00,
  "minimumPrice": 680.00,
  "maximumPrice": 3200.00,
  "payerName": "Blue Cross Blue Shield",
  "dataSource": "CMS Hospital Price Transparency",
  "recordType": "hospitalPrice",
  "scrapedAt": "2024-01-15T10:30:00+00:00"
}

FAQs

Why does this use CMS data instead of turquoise.health directly? Turquoise Health requires account login to view their aggregated interface. The underlying data — hospital machine-readable files mandated by CMS — is publicly available at data.cms.gov and is the same data Turquoise Health ingests.

Is this legal to scrape? Yes. CMS hospital price transparency data is a public US government dataset, and hospitals are legally required to publish their prices publicly.

How many procedures and hospitals are covered? CMS covers approximately 5,000+ hospitals with millions of procedure-payer combinations.

What is a CPT code? CPT (Current Procedural Terminology) codes are standardized codes used to identify medical procedures. Common examples: 70553 (MRI Brain), 45378 (Colonoscopy), 27447 (Total Knee Replacement).

Data Source

CMS Hospital Price Transparency — mandated public pricing data from all US hospitals, aggregated via data.cms.gov.