In the latest episode of my new podcast I walked through seven publicly available data sources that can completely transform how you get a meeting and prepare for a hospital meeting. Every one of them is free. Every one of them has been sitting there for years, waiting for someone like you to use it well. And until very recently, almost no one could, because the data lived inside clunky portals and structured government files that took hours to pull anything useful from.
That has changed. AI is now wonderful at navigating these public datasets, and the opportunity in front of you is real. Here are the seven sources we covered, with the way I would love for you to use each one.
1. CMS Hospital Care Compare
Think of it as Yelp for hospitals. Star ratings across categories like HCAHPS, readmissions, and patient safety. Drill into the sub-scores and you can see where a hospital has room to grow, whether that is nurse communication, surgical site infections, or ED throughput. I recently pulled left-without-being-seen rates and median ED wait times for a client’s prospect list. His outreach completely transformed, and he started getting responses from people who used to ignore him.
2. Medicare Cost Reports (CMS HCRIS)
This one is my favorite. Every hospital CFO files it, and it is wonderfully detailed. Net patient revenue, payer mix, department-level costs, supply cost ratios, even transplant program detail for facilities that have one. Spend a little time inside your top accounts’ cost reports and you will walk into meetings with the kind of context that earns respect right away. Better yet, build your own metric on top of it. Revenue per operating room. Supply spend per discharge. Something that helps the CFO see her own hospital from a fresh angle.
3. Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade
A third-party A through F grade across 28 national measures, including hospital-acquired conditions, surgical site infections, medication safety, and nursing ratios. A hospital sitting at a C wants to be a B. If your solution helps move the needle on any of those measures, this is where your opening lives. Handle it gently in the conversation and you will be welcomed as a partner.
4. IRS Form 990 (ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer)
For nonprofit hospitals, the 990 shows you top vendors, executive compensation, research spending, unrestricted net assets, and strategic priorities. I do not always pull it into the deck. I use it to walk into the room prepared, so that when a topic comes up I already know the number. Preparation builds trust faster than any case study, and your prospect will feel it.
5. CMS Open Payments
The Sunshine Act database. It shows which manufacturers are paying which physicians, and for what. Use it as intelligence, not ammunition. If a surgeon is a key opinion leader in ankle reconstruction for one vendor, that does not block you. It tells you what conversation to have and what conversation to skip. It is also a quiet way to spot joint-venture and referral opportunities in non-competing categories.
6. Annual Reports and Strategic Plans
For-profit systems publish investor decks loaded with growth strategy, service line investments, and AI initiatives. Nonprofit hospitals are required to publish strategic plans, often called community reports, every three years. These include community health needs assessments. If a hospital’s community has a high diabetic population and the plan calls for mobile outreach, you already have your opening line and a beautiful way to position yourself as a partner.
7. State Certificate of Need Filings
Thirty-five states still require hospitals to file public applications to add beds, expand facilities, or acquire major equipment. This is the rarest source on the list, and it is forward looking, so you can see what a hospital plans to do twelve to twenty-four months out. New surgical centers. Bed expansions. Hospice growth. This is opportunity you can prepare for before your competitors even know it exists.
A note before you go
The data is half the work. The other half is your thinking, and how you put unique insights together to bring real value to hospital executives. That is how you earn the meeting. Not by knowing what they already know, but by offering a point of view they have not seen before.
What I want most for you is the orchestration. Walk in with three or four specific points that connect their numbers to a fresh point of view and to your solution. Bring the rest in conversation.
If you would like help building this
If you would like to build this strategy into the way you and your team sell, this is the work I do with clients every day.
Email me at lisa@lisatmiller.com.
Or schedule a meeting with me: https://calendly.com/lisa_t_miller/30min
I would love to help you win.
Lisa
