Methodology
Source data
Every listing comes from one public-domain source: the CMS Provider Data Catalog — "Dialysis Facility: Listing by Facility", published by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. It contains every Medicare-certified dialysis facility (7,557 in the current release) with addresses, phone numbers, ownership, services, and the Quality of Patient Care star rating with its underlying measures.
Processing
- We download the CSV each quarter when CMS releases it, keyed by CMS Certification Number (CCN).
- Facility and city names are converted from CMS all-caps to title case; chain names are normalized to consumer brands (e.g. "Fresenius Medical Care" → Fresenius Kidney Care).
- Addresses are geocoded with the US Census Bureau's public-domain batch geocoder (used for "nearby cities" links; ~89% match rate).
- Star ratings, quality measures, station counts, and services are republished exactly as CMS reports them — never edited, estimated, or imputed.
Rankings
"Best-rated" pages sort strictly by the CMS star rating, descending; facilities sharing a rating are listed alphabetically because CMS does not rank within a star level. Facilities without a current rating are excluded from rankings but always appear on city pages. We accept no payment for placement anywhere on the site.
Update cadence
CMS refreshes this dataset quarterly; we rebuild the site against each release. Current data: April 2026 release (CMS data through 2026-03-25); next CMS update expected 2026-07-15. Each page footer states the release it was built from. Facility details can change between releases — always call to confirm.
Known limitations
- New facilities and recent closures appear only as fast as the quarterly source updates.
- About 6% of facilities have no published star rating (insufficient data, per CMS) — shown as "Not rated."
- Star ratings summarize risk-adjusted clinical measures; they don't capture staff culture, wait times, or amenities.
- Roughly 11% of addresses don't geocode precisely; their "nearby cities" links fall back to largest-city ordering.
Corrections
Found an error? Use the feedback form on the page in question. Reports are checked against the current CMS release and corrected in the next deploy; errors that originate in the CMS source data are flagged to the CMS dialysis data support team.