Extract data from hospital chargemasters
A chargemaster, sometimes called a charge description master or CDM, is a hospital's master list of the gross price it assigns to every billable service, procedure, and supply. It is a price list, not a claim and not a bill: no patient, no diagnosis, no payment, only codes and their standard charges. A revenue-integrity analyst reconciling prices, a payer negotiating contract rates, and a compliance team publishing the machine-readable file that federal price-transparency rules require all read the same schedule. When Lakeside Regional Medical Center issues its chargemaster effective 2026-01-01 in USD, listing 12,480 distinct service lines under NPI 1982746531, the file sets the list price behind every charge the hospital raises. Each line pairs a code with a price and the context needed to bill it. Service codes can be CPT, HCPCS, ICD-10-PCS, or internal codes: CPT 99285 for a level-five emergency visit lists at 2,450 USD, HCPCS J1100 for injectable dexamethasone at 48 USD, and CPT 71046 for a two-view chest radiograph at 410 USD. Department code and name place each charge in its revenue center, the unit_of_measure fixes how it is counted, and a modifier_code such as 26 or TC splits a professional component from a technical one. For diagnosis-related group billing, a service maps to a DRG with a drg_weight, so MS-DRG 470 for a major joint replacement carries a relative weight of 2.1364 that drives the reimbursement calculation. Passed to Talonic, a chargemaster returns the facility header, the currency, and the reimbursement method as fields, keeping the service lines, DRG mappings, and payer contracts as tables so tens of thousands of lines load at once. A schedule effective 2026-01-01 that lists CPT 99285 at 2,450 USD and maps MS-DRG 470 at a 2.1364 weight loads into a pricing system as structured rows rather than a flattened PDF. Because a chargemaster carries list prices and no patient data, it is not protected health information, and the codes and charges return as written without being recomputed or repriced.
What gets extracted from hospital chargemasters
How extraction works for hospital chargemasters
Chargemasters arrive as exported spreadsheets rendered to PDF, the machine-readable standard-charge files hospitals publish, and internal fee schedules, so the code, the description, and the price sit in columns whose order shifts by facility. Classification aligns the file with the chargemaster schema in the Field Registry, which separates the facility header from the line-item services, the DRG mappings, and the payer contracts. Each chargemaster_price is typed as a number in the document ISO 4217 currency and read as a gross list price, distinct from any negotiated rate, while each service_code is kept with its code system, its description, its department, and its unit_of_measure. DRG mappings carry the DRG code and its drg_weight for acuity-based reimbursement, and the payer-contracts table keeps each payer contracted rate and discount percentage where the file lists them. Every value returns with a confidence score and a source-region pointer consistent with DIN SPEC 91491, so an analyst can check a code or a standard charge against the published schedule. No patient information sits in a chargemaster, and the prices are returned as written without repricing or applying any discount.
Sample extraction
An excerpt from a hospital chargemaster effective 2026-01-01
{
"document_number": "CDM-2026-LR-01",
"document_date": "2025-12-15",
"effective_date": "2026-01-01",
"supplier_name": "Lakeside Regional Medical Center",
"supplier_tax_id": "NPI 1982746531",
"currency": "USD",
"version_number": "rev_2026_Q1",
"reimbursement_method": "Fee-for-service with DRG mapping",
"total_services_count": 12480,
"chargemaster_services": [
{
"service_code": "99285",
"service_description": "Emergency department visit, level 5",
"chargemaster_price": 2450,
"department_code": "0450",
"department_name": "Emergency",
"unit_of_measure": "per visit",
"effective_date": "2026-01-01",
"status": "active"
},
{
"service_code": "J1100",
"service_description": "Injection, dexamethasone sodium phosphate, 1 mg",
"chargemaster_price": 48,
"department_code": "0250",
"department_name": "Pharmacy",
"unit_of_measure": "per unit",
"effective_date": "2026-01-01",
"status": "active"
},
{
"service_code": "71046",
"service_description": "Radiologic examination, chest, 2 views",
"chargemaster_price": 410,
"department_code": "0320",
"department_name": "Radiology",
"unit_of_measure": "per procedure",
"modifier_code": "TC",
"effective_date": "2026-01-01",
"status": "active"
}
],
"chargemaster_drg_mappings": [
{
"service_code": "27447",
"drg_code": "470",
"drg_description": "Major hip and knee joint replacement without MCC",
"drg_weight": 2.1364
}
]
}Frequently asked
Is a chargemaster the same as a claim or a bill?
No. A chargemaster is a list of the gross standard charges a facility assigns to each code, with no patient, no diagnosis, and no payment. A CMS-1500 or UB-04 claim bills for one patient episode. Talonic reads each on its own schema and keeps the price list distinct from a claim.
Which code systems does it read?
The service_code is captured whether it is a CPT, HCPCS, ICD-10-PCS, DRG, or internal proprietary code, so CPT 99285, HCPCS J1100, and CPT 71046 each return with the code system that labels them.
Does it capture DRG weights?
Yes. The chargemaster_drg_mappings table returns each mapped DRG with its relative weight, so MS-DRG 470 with a 2.1364 weight is read as a number that a reimbursement model can use directly.
Does a chargemaster contain protected health information?
No. It lists prices and codes with no patient data, so unlike a claim or a clinical report it is not protected health information (PHI).
Does Talonic reprice or apply discounts?
No. It returns the gross chargemaster_price and any listed payer discount as written and links each to its source region. Applying a contract rate or repricing a line is the work of the billing system, not the extraction.
Ready to extract from your own hospital chargemasters?
Author note
Reviewed by Talonic engineering, healthcare schema review · last reviewed 2026-07-08