API Documentation

Access all OpenMedicare data programmatically via static JSON endpoints. No authentication, no rate limits, no API keys.

No Auth Required

Just fetch the URL. No API keys, no tokens, no sign-up.

CDN-Backed

Served from Vercel's global edge network. Fast anywhere.

Periodic Updates

Refreshed with new CMS releases (currently through 2023).

CC BY 4.0

Free to use with attribution. Open data for everyone.

Base URL

https://www.openmedicare.us/data/

Also available at https://www.openmedicare.us/data/

Quick Start

JavaScript / fetch

const res = await fetch('https://www.openmedicare.us/data/watchlist.json')
const data = await res.json()
console.log(data.providers.length) // 500 flagged providers

Python

import requests
data = requests.get('https://www.openmedicare.us/data/states.json').json()
for state in data['states'][:5]:
    print(state['state'], state['total_payments'])

cURL

curl -s https://www.openmedicare.us/data/trends.json | jq '.yearly_totals[0]'

Aggregate Datasets

Pre-computed analysis files covering all of Medicare.

Endpoint	Description
/data/ml-v2-results.json	ML model v2 fraud detection results — scores, features, and classifications for flagged providers
/data/stats.json	Site-wide summary statistics (provider counts, payment totals, model metrics)
/data/top-providers.json	Top 1,000 Medicare providers by payments
/data/watchlist.json	500 providers flagged for billing anomalies
/data/states.json	State-level Medicare spending data
/data/specialties.json	Specialty-level spending data
/data/procedures.json	Procedure-level spending data
/data/trends.json	10-year spending trends (2014–2023)
/data/fraud-features.json	Fraud feature matrix for 1.14M providers
/data/covid-test-billing.json	$2.84B COVID test billing analysis
/data/wound-care.json	$5.53B wound care billing analysis
/data/upcoding.json	Upcoding detection (99214/99213 ratios)
/data/place-of-service.json	Office vs facility spending
/data/geographic.json	500 cities, 200 zip codes
/data/standardized-payments.json	Geographic cost adjustments
/data/allowed-amounts.json	Three-way payment gap analysis
/data/utilization.json	Individual vs organization analysis
/data/markup-analysis.json	Specialty markup ratios
/data/drug-spending.json	Drug spending trends
/data/rural-urban.json	Rural vs urban analysis

Detail Endpoints

Individual records for providers, procedures, states, and specialties.

/data/providers/{NPI}.json

Individual provider detail (2,003 providers)

Example: /data/providers/1003000126.json

/data/procedures/{CODE}.json

Procedure detail (500 procedures)

Example: /data/procedures/99213.json

/data/states/{CODE}.json

State detail (61 states/territories)

Example: /data/states/CA.json

/data/specialties/{SLUG}.json

Specialty detail (105 specialties)

Example: /data/specialties/internal-medicine.json

Dynamic API Endpoints

Live server-side endpoints returning real-time data.

GET/api/stats

Live JSON stats — total providers, flagged count, payments, model AUC, last updated

GET/api/embed/fraud-stats

Embeddable HTML widget showing key fraud stats (use in iframe)

Example: /api/stats Response

{
  "total_providers": 1719625,
  "flagged_providers": 500,
  "total_payments": 854800000000,
  "flagged_payments": 400000000,
  "model_auc": 0.83,
  "articles": 51,
  "last_updated": "2026-02-21"
}

total_providers — Total unique Medicare providers in dataset (1.72M)

flagged_providers — Providers flagged by ML model for billing anomalies

total_payments — Total Medicare payments in dollars (2014–2023)

flagged_payments — Payments associated with flagged providers

model_auc — Area Under ROC Curve for the fraud detection model

articles — Number of investigative articles published

last_updated — Date of last data refresh (ISO format)

Embeddable Widget

Embed a live fraud stats card on your site. See the widget preview page for a live demo and copy-paste code.

<iframe src="https://www.openmedicare.us/api/embed/fraud-stats"
  width="500" height="180" frameborder="0"
  style="border:none;border-radius:16px;overflow:hidden;"
  title="OpenMedicare Fraud Stats"></iframe>

Usage & Attribution

License

All data is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). You are free to use, share, and adapt the data for any purpose, including commercial use.

Attribution

Please credit OpenMedicare and link to www.openmedicare.us when using our data.

Data Source

Original data from CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services). Medicare Provider Utilization and Payment Data, 2014–2023.

Update Frequency

Datasets are refreshed periodically as CMS publishes new annual releases. Current data covers 2014–2023 (the latest available release).

Who Is This For?

📰 Journalists

Download pre-analyzed datasets for Medicare spending stories. Find outliers, trends, and anomalies without wrangling raw CMS data.

🔬 Researchers

Access fraud feature matrices, geographic breakdowns, and 10-year time series for academic research and policy analysis.

💻 Developers

Build dashboards, visualizations, or tools on top of our data. Static JSON endpoints work with any language or framework.

← Back to Downloads

Data Sources

• Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)
• Medicare Provider Utilization and Payment Data (2014-2023)
• CMS National Health Expenditure Data

Last Updated: February 2026 (data through 2023, the latest CMS release)

Note: All data is from publicly available Medicare records. OpenMedicare is an independent journalism project not affiliated with CMS.