Fonteum Methodology

01 · Data sourcing

Where the data comes from.

Every published figure starts from a public, reproducible federal source. Primary inputs: CMS PECOS, CMS Care Compare, CMS Provider of Services, CMS SNF All Owners, CMS Payroll-Based Journal, OIG LEIE — the canonical authorities for U.S. healthcare provider identity, Medicare facility quality, and enforcement actions.

Each source is registered in /sources with refresh cadence, fields used, limitations, and an explicit display ceiling.

02 · Coverage scope

What we include, and what we don't.

We track businesses with a physical US presence across the network's category groups. Inclusion test: real verifiable address, publicly accessible business record, ≥1 independent review source.

Exclusions: online-only operators, lead-gen shells, businesses without a reviewable public footprint. Coverage gaps documented per study.

03 · Update cadence

How often we refresh.

Listings refresh on a rolling 30-day cadence; ratings/reviews refresh weekly for the highly-rated segment. Research snapshots are dated and versioned per study.

04 · Credential checks

What "highly rated" means on Fonteum.

For healthcare provider records normalized across federal CMS and HHS-OIG sources, the credential status we surface is what those public sources themselves publish — facility-level records (CMS PECOS, CMS Provider of Services), quality-and-outcomes records (CMS Care Compare modules), enforcement records (OIG LEIE). We do not assert credentials we cannot trace to a federal public source.

We do not claim independent vetting. We claim publication of what independent federal sources have measured.

05 · Corrections policy

How to report an error.

Send to corrections@fonteum.com or use /contact. We acknowledge within two business days and publish the resolution to /corrections-log. Substantive research corrections update the affected article and append a dated note.

06 · Editorial standards

No pay-to-rank.

Rankings are derived from public ratings and credentials; not influenced by commercial relationships. Featured slots are clearly labelled. Research content is never sponsored.

07 · Research methodology

Sample sizes, methods, disclosed limits.

Each study declares sample size, inclusion criteria, temporal coverage, and methods. Datasets are published as downloadable CSVs at /research/data/<slug>.csv. Where studies use correlations or modeled estimates, the methods name the estimator, assumptions, and uncertainty.

08 · Source-pack ingestion methodology

How a public dataset becomes a wired source.

Five-stage pipeline: (1) versioned manifest (authority + license + field list, reviewed against the restricted-source list); (2) bounded dry-run pilot + match-rate validation; (3) confidence calibration + low-confidence exclusion; (4) registry write to src/lib/brand/sources-registry.ts; (5) public surfacing via SourceChip + ProvenanceCard.

09 · Entity matching

Connecting profiles to source-pack records.

Deterministic match on stable identifier (NPI / state license / CMS Certification Number) with probabilistic fallback on (name, address, taxonomy). Confidence tier assigned at match time. Low-confidence matches stay internal.

10 · Provenance field architecture

The four-piece contract.

Every public field carries source name + last-checked ISO date + confidence tier + display permission. Aligned with W3C PROV-DM (Entity / Activity / Agent decomposition) and the FAIR data principles (Findable · Accessible · Interoperable · Reusable). Wire shape at /data; UI shape at /data-provenance.

11 · Confidence scoring

Tiering today + on the roadmap.

Tier high requires stable-identifier match plus address agreement. Tier medium requires multi-field agreement without an identifier. Tier low covers residual ambiguity and is not displayed publicly. Threshold is deterministic + manually reviewed today; learned-model approach is on the roadmap once labeled gold sets are in place.

12 · Historical change detection

Versioned at the field level.

We version the value, not the surrounding metadata. Change record = (provider_id, field, previous_value, new_value, source, observed_at, snapshot_id). Cadence per source family: OIG LEIE monthly, CMS PECOS monthly, CMS Care Compare quarterly, CMS Provider of Services quarterly, CMS Payroll-Based Journal quarterly.

13 · Reproducibility

How to re-run any published study.

Every research study ships its CSV at /research/data/<slug>.csv with a methodology block declaring sample size + inclusion criteria + temporal coverage. Federal-source studies have aggregation scripts in scripts/research/. Indexed-dataset studies document group-by aggregations in the technical appendix.

14 · Citation guidance

How to cite Fonteum Research.

Each study page carries a copy-paste citation block at /research/<slug>#cite. Recommended form: Fonteum Research, "<Study Title>," <Month YYYY>. https://fonteum.com/research/<slug>. Dataset: https://fonteum.com/research/data/<slug>.csv. AP-style short and BibTeX variants available on each study page.

15 · What we do not claim

Disclaimers in writing.

Counts describe the Fonteum provider dataset (6.8M+ providers across 17+ federal source families), not a representative sample of the U.S. healthcare provider data landscape. We do not own / moderate Google reviews. No pay-to-rank. No unsupported v-word adjective in user-facing copy.