Healthcare data is expensive. Definitive Healthcare charges $10K+/year. But the US government publishes an enormous amount of healthcare data through free APIs.
If you're building a provider directory, drug safety tool, hospital comparison app, or clinical research platform, these are the sources worth knowing about.
1. NPPES NPI Registry (Provider Verification)
Every healthcare provider in the US — doctors, nurses, pharmacists, clinics, hospitals — must have a National Provider Identifier. The NPPES database is the authoritative source.
What you get: Provider name, NPI number, specialty/taxonomy, practice address, phone, organization affiliations.
Use cases: Provider directory builds, credentialing verification, healthcare CRM enrichment.
The official NPPES search UI is notoriously slow and limited. This NPI search tool wraps the API into something usable for bulk lookups.
2. ClinicalTrials.gov (Trial Search and Monitoring)
The largest registry of clinical trials worldwide. The v2 API (released 2023) is actually well-designed.
What you get: Trial title, status, conditions studied, interventions, sponsor, enrollment, locations, results.
Use cases: Drug pipeline monitoring, patient recruitment tools, competitive intelligence for pharma.
ClinicalTrials.gov Search — search by condition, drug, sponsor, or status.
3. OpenFDA Drug Adverse Events and Recalls
The FDA publishes adverse event reports (FAERS) and drug/device recalls through a clean REST API.
What you get: Adverse event reports with drug names, reactions, outcomes, patient demographics. Recall notices with reason, classification, and distribution.
Use cases: Pharmacovigilance monitoring, drug safety research, regulatory compliance.
OpenFDA Search — search adverse events by drug name, reaction, or date range.
4. CMS Hospital Quality Ratings
Medicare's Hospital Compare data rates every US hospital on quality measures, patient experience, readmission rates, and mortality.
What you get: Overall star rating (1-5), individual quality scores, patient experience scores, safety scores.
Use cases: Hospital comparison tools, insurance network analysis, healthcare facility research.
CMS Hospital Ratings — search by hospital name, city, state, or rating.
5. CMS Open Payments (Physician-Industry Payments)
Every payment from a drug or device company to a physician is reported here. Also known as the "Sunshine Act" data.
What you get: Physician name, company name, payment amount, payment type (consulting, food, travel, research), date.
Use cases: Conflict of interest research, physician relationship mapping, compliance monitoring.
Open Payments Search — search by physician name, company, state, or payment type.
6. CMS Nursing Home Compare
Quality ratings and inspection data for every Medicare/Medicaid-certified nursing home in the US.
What you get: Overall rating, health inspection rating, staffing rating, quality measure rating, penalty history.
Use cases: Senior care facility research, quality reporting, long-term care analytics.
Nursing Home Compare — search by facility name, city, state, or rating.
Combining These Sources
These APIs work well together. A typical healthcare data pipeline might:
- Start with NPPES to build a provider list for a region
- Cross-reference CMS Open Payments to see industry relationships
- Check CMS Hospital Ratings for facility quality scores
- Monitor ClinicalTrials.gov for active research at those facilities
- Track OpenFDA for adverse events related to drugs prescribed there
Each API has different rate limits and query formats. I wrapped them into standardized tools that return consistent JSON and handle pagination automatically.
The data is free. The hard part is integrating 6 different APIs with 6 different schemas into one pipeline. These tools handle that.
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