How the numbers are built.

Financial figures are compiled from public HCRIS Medicare cost reports (Worksheets G and G-3) and standardized by Astrelis into a consistent multi-year layer. Operating margin is computed on a cost-report basis. Days cash on hand for hospitals uses the corrected series: cash, temporary investments, and board-designated and funded reserves ÷ daily operating expense excluding depreciation. The older cash-plus-short-term-only convention understated liquidity for roughly 40% of hospitals. Facility-level days cash can still understate hospitals whose cash is swept to a parent system; it is context, never a standalone risk signal.

Peer comparison is calculated within comparable hospital groups only: critical access hospitals are compared against other critical access hospitals, never against urban acute-care systems.

Every statement line carries a tie-out check against the source filing. Lines are shown only where that reconciliation passes; anything that does not tie is labeled “pending tie-out” rather than presented as a number. Missing values are shown as missing, never as zero, never imputed.

County demographic and economic context is drawn from public federal sources: Census ACS 5-year estimates (2019–2023), CDC PLACES (2024 release), BEA regional accounts (2022), HRSA HPSA designations, and USDA ERS Rural-Urban Continuum Codes (2023). County tiles carry two comparators: the US figure is a population-weighted national mean across all counties; the rural figure is the median across nonmetro (RUCC 4–9) counties. Detailed source-line mapping and QA are maintained privately for audit. Every figure on a profile page traces to a public filing.