Confirm file identity and currency
Capture the hospital identity, source URL, retrieval time, file hash, format, publication signals, and whether the file passed structural checks.
Read the rate context
Preserve payer, plan, code, description, setting, rate type, service package, and any modifiers needed to interpret the observation.
Expect structural variation
Hospitals publish different schemas, encodings, code combinations, and rate representations. Parsing success does not guarantee analytical comparability.
Validate before publication
Quarantine malformed or low-confidence loads, run quality checks, review identity mappings, and approve exact manifests before serving data.
State the limits
Published negotiated rates do not necessarily equal allowed amounts, total episodes, utilization-weighted cost, or patient responsibility.
See the method in context