CMS Provider Data API

Name: CMS Provider Data API API
Brand: CMS Provider Data API
Availability: InStock

★ Only Publicly Available SpecHealthcareClinical Datanone25 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Query Medicare provider data — hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, physicians, and quality measures — via the public CMS DKAN datastore.

Quickstart

Get started with CMS Provider Data API in minutes using your preferred integration method.

# Add to your MCP client config (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf)
{
  "jentic": {
    "url": "https://api.jentic.com/mcp",
    "auth": "oauth"
  }
}

# Then ask your agent:
"find Medicare hospital ratings"

# → Jentic returns the GET /events tool with parameter schema, agent executes.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with CMS Provider Data API API.

Query any CMS provider dataset by distribution ID via /datastore/query/{distributionId}

Run SQL-style filters across the datastore using GET /datastore/sql

Search the full provider dataset catalog with GET /search and GET /search/facets

Download filtered query results as CSV through /datastore/query/download

GET STARTED

Start building with CMS Provider Data API API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Spec

Jentic publishes the only available OpenAPI specification for CMS Provider Data API, keeping it validated and agent-ready.

Jentic publishes the only available OpenAPI specification for CMS Provider Data API, keeping it validated and agent-ready. The API exposes the public Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services provider datasets — hospitals, nursing homes, dialysis facilities, home health agencies, hospices, and physicians — through DKAN-style query, download, and SQL endpoints. Callers can search the dataset catalog, fetch metadata schemas, and run filtered queries against any individual distribution to retrieve quality measures, ratings, and provider directory data without authentication.

Use Cases

Patterns agents use CMS Provider Data API API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Hospital Compare and Quality Lookups

Fetch CMS Hospital Compare measures — readmission rates, mortality, patient experience scores — for a specific hospital or set of hospitals. Use GET /search to locate the relevant dataset, then /datastore/query/{distributionId} with conditions on provider ID or state to filter results. The API has no authentication so a quality dashboard can be wired up in well under a day.

Search for the Hospital General Information dataset, then query /datastore/query/{distributionId} for hospitals in California and return the top 10 by overall rating.

Nursing Home and Long-Term Care Research

Pull nursing home star ratings, staffing data, and inspection results for analytics or consumer-facing tools. /datastore/sql lets the caller run SQL-style filters across the long-term-care datasets and /datastore/query/download returns CSV for downstream warehousing. Because all data is public domain, results can be redistributed without licensing review.

Run a SQL query via /datastore/sql to return nursing homes in Texas with overall rating of 5 stars.

Dataset Catalog Discovery

Programmatically browse the full set of CMS provider datasets to keep an internal catalog or data warehouse in sync. GET /search returns dataset records with identifiers, /search/facets exposes filterable categories, and /metastore/schemas/{schema_id}/items lists the items under each schema. This pattern is useful when the underlying CMS distributions change identifier on quarterly refresh.

Call GET /search with the keyword 'hospice' and return the dataset identifiers and titles for all matching datasets.

AI Agent Provider Data Lookups via Jentic

An AI agent answering healthcare questions discovers CMS provider data through Jentic, loads the relevant query schema, and executes filtered datastore calls. Because the API has no authentication, the agent can chain a /search call and a /datastore/query call in a single workflow without managing credentials. Jentic still tracks the call so traffic, errors, and latency are observable.

Use Jentic to search for 'CMS hospital data', load the /datastore/query/{distributionId} schema, and return Medicare-rated hospitals in zip code 10001.

Key Endpoints

25 endpoints — jentic publishes the only available openapi specification for cms provider data api, keeping it validated and agent-ready.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

GET

/search

Search the CMS dataset catalog

GET

/datastore/sql

Run a SQL-like query

GET

/datastore/query/{distributionId}

Query a single dataset distribution

GET

/datastore/query/{distributionId}/download

Download query results as CSV

GET

/metastore/schemas/{schema_id}/items

List all items for a metadata schema

GET

/metastore/schemas/dataset/items/{identifier}

Fetch a dataset record

GET

/search

Search the CMS dataset catalog

GET

/datastore/sql

Run a SQL-like query

GET

/datastore/query/{distributionId}

Query a single dataset distribution

GET

/datastore/query/{distributionId}/download

Download query results as CSV

GET

/metastore/schemas/{schema_id}/items

List all items for a metadata schema

Why though Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

Credential isolation

The CMS Provider Data API is unauthenticated, so there are no keys to store. Jentic still proxies the request for observability and applies retry and timeout policy without exposing any secrets to the agent.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search by intent (e.g. 'find Medicare hospital ratings') and Jentic returns the matching CMS query operation with its parameter schema, so the agent can construct a valid distribution query without parsing DKAN documentation.

Time to first call

Direct CMS integration: half a day to one day to learn the DKAN query syntax and dataset identifiers. Through Jentic: under one hour — search, load schema, execute.

Related APIs

Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.

Complementary

HealthCare.gov Marketplace

HealthCare.gov exposes Marketplace plan and issuer data for ACA enrollment.

Use HealthCare.gov when the task is plan availability or premiums; use CMS Provider Data for provider quality and ratings.

Complementary

ClinicalTrials.gov

ClinicalTrials.gov provides metadata on registered clinical trials.

Use ClinicalTrials.gov for trial recruitment and study data; use CMS Provider Data for provider performance lookups.

Alternative

Data.gov Catalog

Data.gov is the cross-agency US government open data catalog.

Use Data.gov for non-CMS federal datasets; use the CMS Provider Data API directly when you already know the dataset is a CMS provider distribution.

Complementary

1upHealth

1upHealth provides FHIR-based patient and clinical data integrations.

Use 1upHealth for individual patient EHR data; use CMS Provider Data for population-level provider quality.

FAQs

Specific to using CMS Provider Data API API through Jentic.

Why is there no official OpenAPI spec for CMS Provider Data API?

CMS does not publish an OpenAPI specification for its DKAN provider data endpoints. Jentic generates and maintains this spec so that AI agents and developers can call CMS Provider Data API via structured tooling. It is validated against the live API and kept up to date. Get started at https://app.jentic.com/sign-up.

What authentication does the CMS Provider Data API use?

The CMS Provider Data API is public domain and requires no authentication for read operations. Through Jentic the call is still tracked so an agent gets observability, retries, and rate-limit handling without managing any keys.

Can I query Medicare hospital quality measures with the CMS Provider Data API?

Yes. Search the dataset catalog with GET /search for terms such as 'hospital general information' or 'readmission', then call /datastore/query/{distributionId} with the returned identifier and conditions on provider ID or state to retrieve quality measures.

What are the rate limits for the CMS Provider Data API?

The OpenAPI spec does not declare numeric rate limits. CMS applies general fair-use throttling on data.cms.gov, so large extracts should use /datastore/query/download for CSV export rather than paginating thousands of JSON queries.

How do I run a SQL-style query through Jentic?

Search Jentic for 'query CMS data', load the GET /datastore/sql schema, and execute with the SQL-style query string. Install the SDK with pip install jentic and call it via the async client. The endpoint accepts the DKAN SQL dialect for selecting and filtering distributions.

Is the data returned by this API redistributable?

Yes. The CMS Provider Data API is licensed as public domain (usa.gov government works), so results from /datastore/query and /datastore/query/download can be cached, redistributed, or republished without licensing fees.