Learn: healthcare policy and data, explained from the source
Plain-language explainers for US healthcare policy and federal data. Each guide answers the question completely, cites the primary CMS and federal sources, and links to the underlying facility-level data with per-field provenance. The inaugural cluster covers hospital-acquired conditions and the CMS HAC Reduction Program.
Explainers
What hospital-acquired conditions are, the 14 CMS categories under the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, and how the HAC Reduction Program penalizes the worst-performing quartile of hospitals. FY2026 data for 3,055 hospitals.
Read →Facility-level FY2026 penalty status and Total HAC Scores, rolled up by state — 719 of 3,012 scored hospitals take the 1-percent Medicare payment reduction. Companion data page to the explainer.
Read →How CMS measures nursing home staffing via the mandatory Payroll-Based Journal (PBJ), the published federal RN hours-per-resident-day benchmark, and where to find county-level staffing data across thousands of US nursing home facilities.
Read →What a Denial of Payment for New Admissions is, how CMS imposes it, how long bans typically last, and which states have the most enforcement actions — with data from the CMS NH Penalties file.
Read →A complete explanation of the National Provider Identifier — what it is, the difference between Type 1 and Type 2 NPIs, how the 10-digit structure works, and how to look up any provider in the federal NPPES registry.
Read →NPI stands for National Provider Identifier. This guide breaks down each letter of the acronym, explains the digit structure, and shows how the NPI compares to the DEA number, UPIN, and other provider IDs.
Read →A step-by-step guide to looking up and checking any NPI in the NPPES registry — what fields to examine, red flags that signal an invalid or misused number, and when a deeper credential check is warranted.
Read →More explainers are added as Fonteum publishes new federal-data topics. Browse the research studies and the hospital cost report data for the underlying datasets.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the Fonteum Learn hub?
- The Learn hub is Fonteum's library of plain-language explainers for US healthcare policy and federal data. Each explainer answers a definitional question completely, cites the primary federal sources, and links to the underlying facility-level data so any figure can be traced to its origin. The inaugural cluster covers hospital-acquired conditions and the CMS HAC Reduction Program.
- What does the hospital-acquired conditions guide cover?
- It covers the CMS definition of hospital-acquired conditions, the 14 categories under the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, how the Present on Admission indicator drives the payment provision, and how the separate HAC Reduction Program penalizes the worst-performing quartile of hospitals with a 1-percent Medicare payment reduction. It is a policy and data explainer, not clinical guidance.
- Where can I find facility-level HAC penalty data?
- The companion research page, HAC Reduction Program Penalties, publishes FY2026 facility-level penalty status and Total HAC Scores rolled up by state, sourced from the CMS HAC Reduction Program Hospital file. Among the scored hospitals, 719 — roughly the worst-performing quartile — take the 1-percent payment reduction.
- Are Fonteum's Learn explainers medically reviewed?
- Yes. A non-practicing medical reviewer checks each explainer for source interpretation, terminology, and limitations language. The reviewer does not provide clinical advice; the explainers cover regulatory and data accuracy, not patient care.
- How current is the HAC data on Fonteum?
- The HAC figures reflect the CMS FY2026 program year, read directly from the CMS Hospital file on data.cms.gov at the snapshot date shown on each page. CMS refreshes the file annually by federal fiscal year; Fonteum re-reads it on each publish and records the new snapshot date in the provenance chain.