Transparency Price Data
Understanding Price Transparency
Healthcare price transparency is a nationwide initiative designed to make costs visible to patients, providers, and policymakers.
Under federal rules, hospitals and payers must publicly post their negotiated rates, cash prices, and payer-specific reimbursements for thousands of procedures.
The result: Millions of rows of data scattered across thousands of files — valuable, but largely inaccessible without specialized tools.
Where the Data Come From
Price transparency data originates from two main public sources:
Hospital Transparency Files (MRFs) contain:
Gross charges (list prices)
Cash prices (self-pay)
Negotiated rates by payer and plan
De-identified minimum and maximum negotiated rates
Payer Transparency Files (TiC) contain:
In-network rates for covered services
Out-of-network allowed amounts
Prescription drug costs (as applicable)
While public, these files are massive, inconsistent, and often unusable without processing which is where Clearcut Health steps in.
The Challenge of Raw Transparency Data
Raw transparency data is not standardized. Hospitals and payers vary in structure, naming, and completeness which creates barriers to comparison. To make the data actionable, it must go through extensive transformation: acquisition, extraction, normalization, validation, and aggregation.
How Transparency Data Becomes Usable
We turn complex public price files into clear, reliable data through six simple steps:
Collect: Gather hospital and health plan files and track updates.
Open: Unpack and organize large, messy files.
Match: Standardize names and codes so prices mean the same thing everywhere.
Check: Remove errors and verify data against trusted sources.
Build: Group information by provider, payer, and location for fair comparisons.
Share: Deliver results through dashboards, downloads, and APIs.
The result: transparency data that’s accurate, usable, and ready to power smarter decisions.
When standardized price transparency data levels the playing field across the healthcare ecosystem:
Providers benchmark reimbursement and negotiate fairly
Payers assess market efficiency
Employers analyze benefit costs
Patients understand expenses before care
With Clearcut Health’s validated data, every stakeholder can make smarter and fairer financial decisions.
Clearcut Health’s Approach
We believe healthcare data should be transparent, affordable, and usable for all, not just large enterprises.
Our transparency datasets are:
Publicly sourced and validated for accuracy
Delivered through dashboards, APIs, or downloads
Priced transparently
Clearcut Health turns raw transparency files into strategic intelligence which is making U.S. healthcare pricing fair, clear, and accessible.
