Official Sources
Source Framework for U.S. Hospital Pages
We use official hospital pages first, then reliable government and accreditation references as supporting context. This page lists the source categories our editors rely on when building and updating hospital-location guides.
ushospitalguides.com/ is built for hospital-location and patient-navigation questions. We help users find official hospital pages, addresses, phone routes, appointment links, patient portals, billing pages, medical-record routes, parking and visiting information. We do not provide medical advice, diagnosis, treatment instructions, triage, or emergency care.
Primary Source Categories
| Information type | Official source | Use in our work |
|---|---|---|
| Hospital contact, address, appointments | Official hospital or health-system website | Best source for patient-facing action routes |
| Medicare-certified hospital identity and quality context | Medicare Care Compare and CMS Provider Data Catalog – Hospitals | Federal comparison and dataset context for hospitals |
| Provider and organization identifiers | NPPES NPI Registry | Public NPI records can help identify providers and organizations |
| Price transparency | CMS Hospital Price Transparency | Helps users find the hospital’s standard-charge and shoppable-service information |
| Emergency-care rights context | CMS EMTALA | Explains federal emergency-screening obligations for Medicare-participating hospitals with emergency departments |
| Health centers | HRSA Find a Health Center | Helps distinguish federally funded health centers from hospitals |
| HIPAA/privacy context | HHS HIPAA Privacy Rule | Supports our records/privacy boundary wording |
| VA facilities | VA Facility Locator | Used when a search involves a VA hospital or medical center |
Hospital Website Pages We Prefer
- /locations/ or /locations/hospital-name/ pages
- Contact us or patient information pages
- Appointment or scheduling pages
- Patient portal pages published by the health system
- Medical records / Health Information Management pages
- Billing, insurance, financial assistance and price-transparency pages
- Campus map, parking, directions and visiting-hours pages
- Emergency department pages and entrance instructions
How We Use Government Data
Supporting source, not final appointment route
Government datasets are excellent for verifying hospital identity, certification context, quality reporting and official framework. For a patient who needs to call, visit, schedule, log in or request records, we route the final action to the hospital or health system official page whenever possible.
What We Avoid
- Scraped directory pages as final proof for current phone numbers
- AI-generated summaries without official links
- User reviews as factual sources for hospital services
- Unverified social posts for phone, hours, records or appointment data
- Medical advice pages for treatment or diagnosis decisions
Need to report an update?
Send the hospital page URL, the correction, and the official source we should verify against. Our editors review corrections before changing published data.
Contact the editorial teamRead our correction process