The Six-Tier Source Hierarchy, Manual-Verification Workflow & Screenshot-Capture Practice Behind Every Facility Page — Across Four Countries
This page sets out, in detail, where the information on medical-centers.org/ comes from, the order in which sources govern when they conflict, the agencies, accrediting bodies, and publications we rely on across the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, the manual screenshot-capture step that is part of every verification, and the workflow every page passes through before publication. Read it alongside our Editorial Policy.
What’s on this page
1. Overview — Why a Tiered Hierarchy
Healthcare facility information lives in many places. The same fact — say, whether a hospital has a 24-hour emergency department, the name of its parent system after a recent acquisition, the address of its main campus, or its current Joint Commission accreditation status — can be reported by the facility itself, by national accrediting bodies, by national and provincial health authorities, by professional bodies, by journalists, and by commercial third-party sites. These reports may not all agree, and the consequences of stale information in healthcare can be serious. We work from a tiered source hierarchy where higher-tier sources govern when sources conflict.
The Facility Itself
The facility's own .org, .gov, .nhs.uk, .ca, or .au website is the primary source for that facility's services, contact details, hours, emergency department status, and patient-portal arrangements. Every facility page on medical-centers.org/ is built from the facility's own published page, screenshot-verified at the time of publication.
Examples of major facilities we reference, by country:
| Country | Major facilities (representative) |
|---|---|
| United States | Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN; Jacksonville, FL; Phoenix-Scottsdale, AZ); Cleveland Clinic; Johns Hopkins Hospital; Massachusetts General Hospital; Cedars-Sinai Medical Center; NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital; NYU Langone Health; Houston Methodist Hospital; UCLA Medical Center; Mount Sinai; Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Stanford Health Care; UCSF Medical Center; Northwestern Memorial Hospital; Duke University Hospital; Vanderbilt University Medical Center; the NIH Clinical Center |
| United Kingdom | Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust; Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust; King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust; Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust; University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust; Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust; Oxford University Hospitals; Cambridge University Hospitals; Imperial College Healthcare; Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children; The Royal Marsden; the Royal Brompton; NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde; NHS Lothian; Cardiff and Vale University Health Board; Belfast Health and Social Care Trust |
| Canada | University Health Network (Toronto — Toronto General, Toronto Western, Princess Margaret); McGill University Health Centre (Montreal); Vancouver General Hospital; The Ottawa Hospital; Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre; The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids, Toronto); Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario; CHU de Québec — Université Laval; Foothills Medical Centre (Calgary); Royal University Hospital (Saskatoon); Health Sciences Centre Winnipeg |
| Australia | Royal Melbourne Hospital; Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (Sydney); Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital; Royal Adelaide Hospital; Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital (Perth); The Alfred (Melbourne); St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney; Westmead Hospital; Princess Alexandra Hospital (Brisbane); Royal North Shore Hospital; The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne; Sydney Children’s Hospital; Royal Hobart Hospital; Royal Darwin Hospital; the Canberra Hospital |
National Accreditation & Regulatory Bodies
Joint Commission accreditation status (US), CQC inspection report and rating (England), Healthcare Improvement Scotland, Healthcare Inspectorate Wales, RQIA Northern Ireland, Accreditation Canada award status, ACSQHC engagement and standards compliance (Australia).
| Body | Country / region | URL |
|---|---|---|
| The Joint Commission | USA — hospital and ambulatory care accreditation | jointcommission.org |
| DNV-GL Healthcare | USA — alternative hospital accreditation | dnv.com/healthcare |
| HFAP / Accreditation Association for Hospitals/Health Systems | USA — alternative hospital accreditation | hfap.org |
| AAAHC (Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care) | USA — ambulatory surgical centers | aaahc.org |
| Care Quality Commission (CQC) | England — health and social care regulator | cqc.org.uk |
| Healthcare Improvement Scotland | Scotland — NHS and independent healthcare regulator | healthcareimprovementscotland.scot |
| Healthcare Inspectorate Wales | Wales — NHS and independent healthcare regulator | hiw.org.uk |
| RQIA (Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority) | Northern Ireland — health and social care regulator | rqia.org.uk |
| Accreditation Canada | Canada — Qmentum accreditation programme | accreditation.ca |
| ACSQHC | Australia — National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards | safetyandquality.gov.au |
Public Quality Data — Linked, Not Republished
Public-quality datasets are produced by the relevant public authorities. We link readers to those public sources and we do not republish, score, rank, or interpret them.
- Medicare Hospital Compare / Care Compare (USA) — star ratings, mortality and readmission measures, patient experience (HCAHPS); medicare.gov/care-compare
- HRSA Find a Health Center (USA) — official FQHC directory; findahealthcenter.hrsa.gov
- CQC published ratings (England) — outstanding / good / requires improvement / inadequate ratings published by service
- Provincial public hospital data (Canada) — Health Quality Ontario (HQO), BC PHSA reports, Health Standards Organization references; varies by province
- AIHW MyHospitals (Australia) — hospital activity and waiting-time data; aihw.gov.au/reports-data/myhospitals
National Coordinating Bodies
The federal/national health agencies that set the framework in each country.
- USA: CMS (cms.gov); HRSA (hrsa.gov); HHS (hhs.gov); NIH (nih.gov); CDC (cdc.gov); AHA (aha.org)
- UK: NHS England, NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, HSC Northern Ireland (nhs.uk); Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC); NICE (nice.org.uk); UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA)
- Canada: Health Canada (canada.ca/en/health-canada); CIHI (cihi.ca); PHAC (canada.ca/en/public-health)
- Australia: Department of Health and Aged Care (health.gov.au); AIHW (aihw.gov.au); TGA (tga.gov.au); Services Australia / Medicare
Clinician Licensure Registers
Used to confirm clinician registration status only — never for endorsement.
- USA: State medical boards (one per state, plus territories); also Federation of State Medical Boards reference
- UK: General Medical Council (GMC) at gmc-uk.org; Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC); Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC)
- Canada: Provincial Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons — CPSO Ontario, CPSBC British Columbia, CPSA Alberta, CMQ Quebec (Collège des médecins du Québec), CPSM Manitoba, CPSS Saskatchewan, CPSNB New Brunswick, CPSNL Newfoundland and Labrador, CPSNS Nova Scotia, CPSPEI PEI
- Australia: Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) at ahpra.gov.au — registers across 16 health professions
Peer-Reviewed Research & Established Medical Publications
Background context only — never sole source for current contact details, services, or accreditation status. Used where directly relevant to a facility profile (e.g., an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center referenced via NCI publications).
- JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association)
- NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine)
- BMJ (British Medical Journal)
- The Lancet
- CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal)
- MJA (Medical Journal of Australia)
- Cochrane Library (systematic reviews)
8. Verification Workflow — Eight Steps Before Anything Goes Live
- Identify the right authoritative source. Facility’s own page, cross-checked against national references (Hospital Compare, CQC, Accreditation Canada, AIHW MyHospitals).
- Verify the URL is live. A human editor clicks every link before publication.
- Capture screenshots manually. Homepage, services page, ED page (where applicable), visitor information — dated and stored.
- Dial-test the main switchboard. Quarterly cycle.
- Verify addresses against country-specific postal lookup. USPS, Royal Mail, Canada Post, Australia Post.
- Pin Google Maps location to the verified street address.
- Cross-reference accreditation and quality data. Joint Commission / CQC / Accreditation Canada / ACSQHC.
- Editor sign-off. A second editor reviews end-to-end before publication.
9. Screenshot Capture — The Discipline That Distinguishes Us
When an editor verifies a facility, the verification includes manually capturing a screenshot of the facility’s live website — homepage, services page, ED page (where applicable), visitor information. The screenshot is dated and stored. When we describe how a facility’s website works in our walkthrough, the description matches the screenshot we captured. When the facility redesigns, restructures, merges, or is acquired, we re-verify, re-capture, and update.
10. We Do Not Rank Clinical Quality
Clinical quality cannot responsibly be ranked from publicly-available data alone. We do not create our own “best hospitals” lists, we do not score or rank facilities, and we do not interpret public-quality data on readers’ behalf. We link readers to the relevant public sources — Medicare Hospital Compare, CQC published ratings, AIHW MyHospitals — and we trust them to make their own informed decisions.
11. FCRA Framework Reminder
Information on the site is general informational content drawn from public agency pages and authoritative public sources. It is not a "consumer report" under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (15 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq.) and medical-centers.org/ is not a Consumer Reporting Agency. Do not use any content on this site to make employment, credit, insurance, tenant-screening, or any other FCRA-permissible-purpose decisions, including clinician credentialling. For clinician credentialling, use the state medical board (US), GMC (UK), provincial College (Canada), or AHPRA (Australia).
12. Sources We Avoid
- Paid-placement directories that misrepresent themselves as official national or regulatory directories
- Pharmaceutical or device-company sponsored content on facility profiles or treatments
- FCRA-prohibited background-check products dressed as physician-research tools
- Telehealth platforms that misrepresent the licensure status of their clinicians or the jurisdictions in which they can practise
- Unregulated medical-claims marketing — miracle cures, unauthorised pharmaceutical sales, “we cure cancer” operations
- Anonymous user-generated review aggregators as standalone authority on clinical quality or facility services
- Other directory aggregator sites — we work to the original source, not to other directories that may themselves be working from stale data
- Hospital marketing materials as authority on neutral metrics — facility marketing is useful for context but never as sole source on accreditation, regulator standing, or public quality data
Have a Sourcing Question?
Email us with subject line “Editorial question” or “Sourcing question.” We’re happy to walk you through the source for any specific factual claim on any facility page, including the screenshot capture date.
📧 info@medical-centers.org