About Sunlight Ledger

An independent public-interest journalism project re-presenting four federal CMS datasets in a single, readable physician profile.

Our Mission

Patients deserve access to objective, verifiable information about their healthcare providers. Sunlight Ledger exists to make that possible — presenting federal public data in a clear, readable format without conflicts of interest or industry funding influencing any editorial decision. The site shows no advertising today; if programmatic display advertising is ever switched on, it will not buy influence over any profile — see Trust for the full commitment.

The Gap This Project Fills

For nearly a decade, ProPublica's Dollars for Docs tool (2010–2019) gave patients a way to look up industry payments to their physicians. When ProPublica retired that tool in 2019, no comparable independent resource emerged to replace it. Meanwhile, four separate federal databases continued growing — each valuable on its own, none connected for the average patient.

Sunlight Ledger addresses that gap. We combine NPPES provider registry data, Open Payments industry funding records, Medicare utilization statistics, and PECOS enrollment data into a single profile for each provider in the 13 states we currently cover. This is something ProPublica's tool never did: theirs covered only payments. Ours covers the full federal record.

What We Do Differently

  • Four datasets, not one. Payments alone tell an incomplete story. We also show what procedures a physician performs most, how long they have been in practice, and whether they participate in Medicare.
  • No quality ratings. We do not rank doctors by "quality." Volume and payments are factual; quality is complex and not reducible to federal billing data.
  • No user reviews. We do not host comments, ratings, or testimonials about individual providers. This is a deliberate editorial choice to keep the site grounded in verifiable federal data.
  • Transparent scoring. Our Data Coverage level describes how much federal information exists for a provider — not clinical performance. The exact formula is published in our methodology.
  • Verify-on-source links. Every data point on every profile includes a direct link back to the CMS source record so anyone can verify our presentation against the federal source.

Who It's For

Patients preparing for a new provider relationship or researching a specialist referral. Journalists investigating healthcare conflicts of interest. Researchers studying physician practice patterns or industry relationships. Providers who want to see what's publicly published about them and request corrections.

Who Built This

Sunlight Ledger was created by Yoel Castaño, a software engineer focused on public data transparency and programmatic data journalism. The project applies the same engineering rigor used in large-scale data systems to federal healthcare datasets — aggregating, cross-referencing, and presenting information that is already public but difficult to access. Full editor profile, verification channels (LinkedIn, GitHub, email), and independence statement: /author/yoel-castano/.

This is an independent project. There is no venture capital, no hospital partnerships, no pharmaceutical sponsorship. The infrastructure runs on commodity hardware, the code is purpose-built, and every number traces back to a federal source file.

For press inquiries, fact sheet, and full background, see our Press page. For a single-page overview of our principles, funding, and how we differ from comparable sites, see Trust.

Independence

Sunlight Ledger does not:

  • Accept payments from pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, healthcare providers, hospitals, or insurers to influence any profile or editorial decision
  • Sell visitor data
  • Have a B2B product for doctors to "claim" or "optimize" their profiles
  • Accept editorial influence in exchange for any consideration, from advertisers or anyone else

We announced programmatic display advertising (Google AdSense) for 2026-08-08, but it has not been switched on: no advertising is shown on the site today. If it is switched on, it will have no influence over any profile, data point, or editorial decision, and providers still cannot pay for anything — see Trust.

Our only interest is accurate presentation of public federal data.

Editorial Responsibility

All editorial and methodology decisions are the personal responsibility of the founder, Yoel Castaño. The project's source code, methodology, and data pipeline are publicly documented at /methodology and reproducible by any researcher with access to the same federal datasets.

What We Don't Claim

We do not claim that the data on this site is:

  • A measure of clinical quality or patient outcomes
  • A recommendation to choose or avoid any provider
  • A complete picture of a provider's practice (Medicare patients are typically 65+; private and Medicaid patients are not reflected)
  • Free from CMS-source error (we present federal records as published; we do not independently audit them)

For full disclosure of what the data does and does not cover, see Methodology. For our policy on visitor and provider data, see Privacy. For the legal terms of using this site, see Terms.

Provider Concerns

If you are a healthcare provider with a profile on this site and have a question, correction request, or concern, please see our Provider Portal for a defined process and direct contact channel.

Contact

Data Disclaimer — Data sourced from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS): National Plan and Provider Enumeration System (NPPES), Open Payments program, Medicare Provider Utilization and Payment Data, and Provider Enrollment & Certification data (PECOS). Published under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). This website is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or authorized by CMS, HHS, or the U.S. Government. Data may contain errors as reported to CMS by providers and reporting entities. Industry payment disclosure alone establishes neither wrongdoing nor legality. Medicare data reflects only patients aged 65+ or those with qualifying disabilities. For corrections, contact CMS directly. This information does not constitute medical advice and should not be used as the sole basis for choosing a healthcare provider. Procedure descriptions use plain language and do not reference CPT® codes, which are copyrighted by the American Medical Association. Full methodology → · Report a data error → · Privacy policy →