Press & Media

For journalists, researchers, and media inquiries.

DocTransparency is an independent transparency journalism project. We welcome inquiries from reporters investigating healthcare conflicts of interest, industry payments to physicians, Medicare utilization patterns, or related public-data topics.

Press contact

[email protected] — typically responds within 1 business day.

For factual data verification questions or to confirm the source of a specific data point on the site, please cite the provider's NPI in your email; this lets us pull the exact source record we used.

Project fact sheet

What DocTransparency is

• A unified, readable presentation of four federal CMS datasets per physician
• A Transparency Score that measures data completeness only — how much public federal information exists for a provider, not their clinical quality
• A free, ad-free, account-free public resource for patients, journalists, and researchers

What DocTransparency is not

• Not a quality-rating site. We do not score or rank physicians by quality of care. Our score measures data availability.
• Not a review site. We do not host user-generated reviews, comments, ratings, or testimonials about individual providers.
• Not affiliated with CMS or any government agency. We re-present public CMS data; we are not endorsed by, sponsored by, or in any partnership with CMS.
• Not affiliated with any healthcare industry entity. We accept no funding from pharmaceutical companies, device manufacturers, insurers, hospitals, or providers.
• Not a medical-decision tool. Nothing on the site is medical advice. Patients should always consult licensed clinicians.

Why this matters: the gap left by Dollars for Docs

For nearly a decade, ProPublica's Dollars for Docs (2010–2019) was the primary independent way for patients to look up industry payments to their physicians. When ProPublica retired the tool in 2019, no comparable independent resource emerged.

CMS's own openpaymentsdata.cms.gov covers payments only — not Medicare utilization, not enrollment, not registry data. To assemble the same picture Dollars for Docs offered, plus context, a patient today must query four separate federal databases.

DocTransparency is one developer's attempt to fill that gap.

Founder bio

Yoel Castaño is a software engineer focused on public-data transparency and programmatic data journalism. DocTransparency applies large-scale data engineering to federal healthcare datasets — aggregating, cross-referencing, and presenting information that is already public but practically inaccessible.

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/yoelcastanopeon

Data verification for journalists

Every data point on DocTransparency is sourced from CMS and includes a "verify on CMS" link to the original federal record. If you wish to cite our data:

1. Cite the CMS source dataset as the primary source (NPPES, Open Payments, Medicare Provider Utilization, or PECOS).
2. Cite DocTransparency as the aggregator/presenter, with the URL of the specific profile or hub page used.
3. Reference the data vintage displayed at the top of each page.

We are happy to provide raw source CSVs from CMS for any specific NPI on request.

Statement on factual accuracy

DocTransparency reflects CMS data as published. We do not modify, augment, or editorialize the underlying federal records. Where we observe inconsistencies between source datasets (e.g., NPPES and PECOS disagreeing on a provider's enrollment status), we display the data from each source separately rather than reconciling silently.

If you find a discrepancy between what DocTransparency shows and the underlying CMS record, please email [email protected] so we can investigate at our next data refresh.

Statement on physician concerns

We acknowledge that some physicians may prefer that this aggregated view of their federal records did not exist. We respect those concerns and have built a Provider Portal with a defined process for corrections, formal dispute paths to CMS, and an identity-theft / safety carve-out for suppression.

We do not, however, accept payment, advertising, or favors in exchange for editorial decisions about any profile. The data is public; the publication is journalism; the editorial standard is reproducibility against federal source.

Reproducibility

DocTransparency's methodology is fully documented at /methodology. The data pipeline is reproducible: any researcher with access to the four CMS source datasets can independently recreate our profiles. We welcome scholarly review.

Contact (summary)

• Press / media inquiries: [email protected]
• Provider corrections: [email protected] (or Provider Portal)
• Privacy requests: [email protected]
• Legal / DMCA: [email protected]
• Identity theft / safety concerns: [email protected]
• Founder, direct: [email protected] (best-effort response)