@pipeworx/hospital-prices

Connect: https://pipeworx.io/mcp — every tool in the catalog, including @pipeworx/hospital-prices’s. Install: one-click buttons

No MCP client? Skip the connection: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs {"query":"..."} to find a tool below, GET /v1/tools/<name> for its schema, POST the same URL with arguments for the data — see For AI agents.

Tools: 3

What US hospitals say a service costs: gross charge, self-pay cash price and payer-negotiated rates for a CPT/HCPCS or MS-DRG code at hospitals near a ZIP, from the standard charges files hospitals publish under the CMS hospital price transparency rule.

Tools

• hospital_price_search(code, near, radius_mi?, payer?, plan?, setting?, limit?) — hospitals within a radius of a ZIP (or lat,lon), nearest first, each with gross charge, discounted cash price, de-identified min/max negotiated amounts and a summary of payer rates. With payer/plan it returns that payer’s negotiated rate rows.
• hospital_price_compare(code, ccns[]) — the same fields side by side for up to 10 named hospitals (by CMS Certification Number).
• hospital_price_coverage(ccn? | name? | state?) — whether the store holds a hospital’s prices and, if not, why (blocked, no file found, unsupported version, …).

Every negotiated rate carries dollar_available. When a hospital published a percentage or a formula instead of a dollar figure it is false, the hospital’s own methodology/algorithm text is returned, and no number is invented. Responses carry data_as_of (the file’s own last-updated date), total / truncated / a narrowing hint, and a loud, specific reason instead of an empty list: no hospital in range, hospitals in range but none with prices held (and why), file loaded but code not published, code published but payer not listed.

Auth

Keyless. The data is read from Pipeworx’s own store (a D1 database bound to the gateway); the pack answers only through the Pipeworx gateway. A standalone install has no store and reports that plainly.

Data sources

• Each hospital’s CMS hospital price transparency standard charges file (45 CFR 180), as published by the hospital. Responses name the hospital and that file type, never a download route.

Coverage is partial, and says so

• Hospitals whose site refuses our requests (HTTP 403 / bot challenge) are reported blocked; we do not evade blocks. Others have no findable or parseable file. Each hospital has a status; hospital_price_coverage gives it.
• Only the CMS 70 shoppable services (69 CPT/HCPCS codes) and MS-DRGs are kept. Other codes return code_not_in_scope, not “no prices”.
• The store is loaded in scoped cycles. Check coverage in any response for how many hospitals currently have prices held.
• ZIP distances are between ZIP centroids (town level), not street level.

Licence

The files are published under a federal transparency mandate for public use, but they carry no reuse licence. This pack serves a filtered copy of them, built and flagged under the 2026-09-23 “build the copy when live access does not serve” ruling; every response carries licence_note. The ingest, schema and refresh live in scripts/hospital-prices/ (fleet #3035). Design of record: docs/hospital-price-transparency-plan.md.

No personal data: the min/max negotiated amounts in the files are de-identified by rule.

Tools

• hospital_price_search — Hospital prices for a CPT/HCPCS or MS-DRG code near a ZIP: gross, cash, negotiated by payer, with explicit coverage and absence reasons.
• hospital_price_compare — Compare one service’s prices across up to 10 hospitals by CCN, with absence reasons.
• hospital_price_coverage — Is a hospital (by CCN or name), a state, or the whole store covered by hospital price data, and why not if not.