What v1 includes
The free public register is the v1 surface of Hospital Financial Pulse. It is built directly from the CMS Hospital General Information dataset, published by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and refreshed quarterly. For every Medicare-participating U.S. hospital (5432 facilities at last refresh), Branmoor surfaces:
- Identity & location — facility name, address, city, state, CMS Facility ID
- Hospital Type — Acute Care, Critical Access, Childrens, Psychiatric, etc.
- Ownership — for-profit, voluntary non-profit, government (federal, state, district authority, tribal, VA), physician-owned, or other
- Emergency Services — whether the hospital offers ED services
- CMS Hospital overall rating — 1–5 stars rolled up from process and outcome measures
- Performance measure counts — how many CMS-measured performance metrics are classified Better, Same, or Worse than the national benchmark, across mortality, safety, and readmissions
Each hospital row carries a Branmoor-computed signal flag that aggregates the CMS overall rating with the Better/Worse measure counts. "Elevated operating-quality signal" indicates a hospital with a 1–2 star rating and worse-than-benchmark performance measures. "Strong performance signal" indicates a 4–5 star rating with more Better than Worse measures.
What v1 is not
v1 is the operating-quality view, sourced from a single CMS file. It is not the financial-health view the full Hospital Financial Pulse product is designed to deliver. v1 does not include:
- Operating margin — from CMS Medicare Cost Reports (planned, large-file ingest)
- Days cash on hand — from audited financial statements + 990 filings (planned)
- Bond covenant proximity — from MSRB EMMA municipal bond disclosures for non-profit systems (planned)
- Layoff and service-line-closure signal — from press releases and 8-K material event filings (planned)
- Executive turnover — from 990 governance disclosures and press tracking (planned)
- Rural Closure Watch surface — the free public-interest layer predicting rural-hospital closure 12–18 months out and mapping the patient-routing impact (planned)
The full set is the paid Hospital Financial Pulse product. See the product page for the paid layer and the dual-surface structure (paid B2B + free Rural Closure Watch for state health departments and EMS planners).
Why operating-quality is a useful precursor signal
Hospital operating quality and hospital financial health are correlated but not identical. Hospitals with consistently worse-than-benchmark mortality, safety, and readmission measures face downward pressure on CMS value-based-purchasing reimbursement, MA-plan steerage decisions, and self-insured-employer carve-outs. The v1 signal — CMS rating plus measure counts — is a leading indicator that often precedes the financial signal by 12–24 months.
Capital-markets buyers (PE, lenders, municipal bond analysts) and operating buyers (hospital CFOs, MA plans) read the v1 surface differently. The methodology page intentionally lets each buyer interpret the signal in their own frame.
Update cadence
The CMS Hospital General Information dataset refreshes quarterly. Branmoor re-ingests on each site deploy.