Yoel Castaño — Editor and Founder

Sole editor and founder of Sunlight Ledger. Software engineer working on public-data transparency and programmatic data journalism.

Contact and verification

  • LinkedIn — linkedin.com/in/yoelcastanopeon — full professional history, verifiable independently of this site.
  • GitHub — github.com/Habanacasta88 — public code, signed commits.
  • Email (direct, no gatekeeper) — [email protected] — response time under 48 business hours for corrections and press.
  • Editorial contacts — see /contact for the routing table ([CORRECTION], [REPLY], [PRESS], [PARTNERSHIP], [BUG]).

Biography

I am a software engineer who has spent the last several years building public-data pipelines that turn hard-to-navigate government datasets into readable pages a non-specialist can use. Sunlight Ledger is my primary editorial project in the US healthcare space.

I do not work for CMS, HHS, or any US federal agency. I do not work for any pharmaceutical company, medical device manufacturer, hospital system, insurer, or healthcare provider group. This project has never accepted money, data, or editorial input from any such entity, and never will.

I take sole responsibility for every editorial and methodology decision on this site.

Expertise and areas of work

Every claim below is anchored in something verifiable — either a live page on this site, a dataset link, or a public profile.

  • Federal health data pipelines. I built and operate the end-to-end pipeline that ingests four separate CMS datasets — NPPES, Open Payments, Medicare Provider Utilization, PECOS — cross-references them by NPI, and renders 15,000 provider profiles across CA, FL, GA, IL, MA, MI, NC, NJ, NY, OH, PA, TX, and WA. Full method: /methodology.
  • Programmatic data journalism. The same engineering approach — data anchored, verifiable, source-cited on the page — is applied across a network of public-interest sites I run. This is the same discipline described in /trust.
  • Search Console-driven publishing. We use a data-quality threshold to decide which profiles we submit to search engines, and many profiles that do not clear it carry noindex,follow. The threshold is not yet applied uniformly across all states and page types; we are tightening it because we would rather show fewer pages than fill a patient's search results with thin ones.
  • US healthcare data specifically. Working knowledge of the legal basis for each dataset we use: Sunshine Act §6002 of the ACA (Open Payments, 42 U.S.C. §1320a-7h), FOIA (Medicare files), and the Bartnicki v. Vopper precedent supporting republication of lawfully-obtained public records. See /trust for the full legal footing.

Editorial independence and how the project is funded

Sunlight Ledger does not accept payment from any healthcare provider, pharmaceutical company, medical device manufacturer, hospital system, insurer, or industry association in exchange for the presence, absence, wording, or ranking of anything on this site — ever.

The site shows no advertising today. Programmatic display advertising (Google AdSense) was announced for 2026-08-08 but has not been switched on; hosting is paid out of pocket. If advertising is ever switched on, it will have zero influence over:

  • Whether a physician appears on the site (that depends only on whether their NPI is in the federal record)
  • What appears on any profile (that depends only on what the federal source files show)
  • The order in which providers appear in any list, search result, or ranking
  • Any editorial decision, methodology change, or correction

Any future partnership will be disclosed on this page and in /trust before it takes effect. Sponsored content, paid placement, and "featured provider" arrangements are prohibited by the editorial policy above and will remain so.

The role of AI in this project

Data ingestion, cross-referencing, and rendering are automated — this site could not exist without automation, given the scale of the federal datasets. AI is used for one thing only: plain-language explanations of Medicare procedure codes, generated from the official CMS description of each code and checked automatically and by sample review before publication. The figures, scores and the sentences that interpret them come from the federal records and from fixed templates I wrote — not from a model. Details: How we use AI.

Every editorial policy decision (what to publish, how to describe it, when to noindex, how to handle a correction) is made by me personally, not by a model.

Corrections, right of reply, and provider concerns

Corrections are handled through a defined process — see /contact for the routing table and SLA, and /for-providers for the provider-specific channel. Errors are examined within 48 business hours, documented in the correction log, and fixed in the source database before the next regeneration of the affected page.

Providers who wish to add context to their profile can exercise a right of reply through the same channel ([REPLY] in the subject line). We do not delete public federal records, but we do publish provider-supplied context alongside the data when it is factual and relevant.

Other work

Sunlight Ledger is part of a small network of public-data sites I operate. The network exists openly — it is not a hidden PBN, no site cross-links artificially for SEO, and no site influences the data on any other. If a journalist wants the full list of properties I operate, contact me directly.

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 →