Mission and perimeter
Public records should stay attached to every summary.
Epieme is a civic intelligence project for patient-safety public records. It helps patients, journalists, regulators, researchers, attorneys, hospital quality officers, and advocates locate records faster without losing sight of the source of truth.
What Epieme is
A source-linked index for public patient-safety records, credentialing signals, legislation, and related civic context.
What Epieme is not
Not medical advice, not legal advice, not a hospital quality score, not a substitute for clinical review, and not the official source.
"The summary is useful only when the official record remains one click away."
Data sources
Every source gets the same disclosure fields.
Source rows use the same fields so readers can compare coverage without guessing what is current, licensed, partial, or not yet published.
| Name | Origin | Coverage | Cadence | Format | License | Limitations | Last pulled | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| State adverse-event reports | State health departments | Partial State-by-state | Varies by state | PDF, HTML, CSV where available | Public record, source-specific terms | Reporting rules vary. Voluntary systems undercount. | Not published yet | State pages |
| Medical board actions | State licensing boards | Partial Source-by-source | Weekly or monthly where available | HTML, PDF, search portals | Public record, source-specific terms | Names, dates, and categories differ by board. | Not published yet | Source pages |
| Patient-safety legislation | State legislative sources and bill APIs | Partial 50-state plan | Daily during legislative sessions | API, HTML | Source-specific terms | Bill text can lag status changes. | Not published yet | States |
| Public petitions and testimony | Public petition pages, hearings, public comments | Not published Source-dependent | Source-dependent | HTML, PDF, CSV where available | Source-specific terms | May include advocacy framing. Needs source separation. | Not published yet | Source pages |
Technical source fields
Each per-source page should include: source owner, retrieval method, schema mapping, retry policy, parser version, validation checks, terms-of-use note, known missing fields, and contact path for the source owner.
Per-source pages
Source methodology pages should live at stable URLs such as
/methodology/sources/cms-care-compare and
/methodology/sources/maine-medical-board. Until
those pages are live, Epieme should not imply complete source
documentation.
Per-state methodology
Each state page should disclose coverage, source mix, statutory context, FOIA status, known gaps, public-records request log, and last review date.
Collection and pipeline
Records move through five documented gates.
The diagram is a map, not the methodology itself. Each gate must link to a source-level or state-level method page as those pages become available.
- 01 Source Official record, FOIA response, or public filing.
- 02 Ingest Pull, archive, checksum, and log retrieval.
- 03 Normalize Map names, dates, locations, categories.
- 04 Verify Classify confidence and preserve source link.
- 05 Publish Show record with limits, date, and correction path.
Ingest
Plain-language: Epieme records where each source came from and when it was retrieved. Technical detail: retrieval logs should include URL, timestamp, parser version, status code, checksum, and source owner.
Normalize
Plain-language: Epieme makes records comparable without changing what the source says. Technical detail: normalized fields should preserve raw values and transformation notes.
Publish
Plain-language: the published record shows the source, date, confidence tier, and correction link. Technical detail: publication should be versioned so prior displays can be reproduced.
"A pipeline stage that cannot be audited is not a methodology stage yet."
Verification and quality
Every claim needs a confidence tier.
Epieme should never ask readers to trust a conclusion without showing whether it is directly verified, derived from joined records, or still unresolved.
Verified incident
A record linked to a primary public source with matching facility, date or date range, jurisdiction, and document owner.
Credentialing red flag
A record that needs source-specific review before Epieme uses it in product copy.
Human review reliability
Human review metrics have not been published yet. Epieme should publish reliability measures once a reviewed corpus is available.
No rankings
Epieme does not score or rank hospitals. It surfaces records, source links, confidence tiers, and known limitations.
Validation checks for each record
- Source URL resolves and is archived where lawful.
- Source owner matches the jurisdiction and record type.
- Extracted dates can be traced to the raw document.
- Classifier outputs retain a confidence tier and version.
- Corrections retain prior display and disposition.
Definitions
Operational terms are defined before they are marketed.
Source-linked
A record includes a direct path to the public source used for the claim.
Public record
A record lawfully available from a public agency, court, board, legislature, or public filing system.
Derived claim
A claim produced by joining two or more records. It must show the join logic.
Protected health information
Individually identifiable health information protected by HIPAA or state privacy law. Epieme will not publish raw PHI.
FOIA or public-records request
A request to a public body for records under federal or state access laws.
Limits and bias
Known gaps are part of the record.
- State variance: FOIA laws, adverse-event definitions, disciplinary reporting, and publication practices differ by state.
- Underreporting: voluntary systems can miss events. Epieme will not present absence of records as absence of risk.
- Adjacent data: malpractice payouts, peer review, clinical outcomes, and sealed settlements are outside the current perimeter unless a public source is documented.
- U.S.-only: international expansion is not part of v0.9. If added, it should be documented under a future major version.
"Naming the gap is safer than letting a reader infer coverage that does not exist."
Ethics, legal, compliance
The page states what Epieme will not publish.
HIPAA posture
Epieme works with public records. It will not publish raw PHI, private medical records, or identifiers that are not already lawfully public and necessary for the record.
What Epieme will not publish
Raw PHI, private patient narratives without permission, sealed records, peer-review protected material, or content obtained outside lawful access channels.
Subject access
Providers or facilities disputing a record can request review. The correction path should preserve the original source and publish the disposition.
Legal pages
Privacy, terms, data use, acceptable use, and DMCA pages should be linked from this section as they are finalized. Privacy is currently available.
"Public does not mean publish without judgment."
Corrections and disputes
Mistakes need a public path, not a private inbox.
Correction commitment
Epieme targets a first response within 5 business days. A final disposition should state whether the record was corrected, annotated, removed, or left unchanged.
Report an errorPublic corrections log
Publish a dated feed with record ID, summary, change type, and disposition.
Fixed mistake example
Use this space only for real corrected errors after launch.
Takedown policy
Document unlawful, sealed, misattributed, or privacy-sensitive takedown criteria.
"A correction is a methodology artifact, not a customer-support ticket."
Independence and funding
Hospitals cannot pay to change a listing.
Funding and conflicts need to be visible before procurement, reporters, or public agencies ask for them.
Funding disclosure
Disclose accelerator support, grants, contracts, customer revenue, and the date each disclosure was updated.
Funder firewall
Hospitals, vendors, funders, and advertisers cannot pay to change methodology, suppress records, alter rankings, or edit source-linked displays.
Conflicts of interest
List any family, advisory, research, hospital, legal, or institutional relationships relevant to coverage.
Advertising policy
Epieme should not sell hospital advertising against public patient-safety listings.
Governance and credentials
Methodology changes have a named owner.
Current methodology owner
Samson Cournane. Founder biography, institutional roles, and conflict disclosures should remain current and verifiable.
External review
No independent methodology audit is published yet. When a review is complete, this page should name the reviewer and link to the write-up.
Advisory board
Do not imply an advisory board before it exists. Named advisors should be listed only with permission, expertise, and conflict disclosures.
"A one-person company can be credible only when accountability is explicit."
FAQ
Questions procurement and reporters ask first.
Does Epieme claim complete national coverage?
No. Coverage is source-specific, state-specific, and versioned. Unknown coverage is labeled as unknown or not published.
Does Epieme score or rank hospitals?
No. Epieme surfaces public records, source links, confidence tiers, and known limitations.
Does Epieme publish protected health information?
No. Epieme will not publish raw PHI or private medical records.
How are errors corrected?
Report a record or section error. Epieme targets first response within 5 business days and will publish dispositions.
Can a hospital pay to change a listing?
No. Payments, contracts, donations, or partnerships cannot alter source-linked records or methodology decisions.
Can researchers use Epieme data?
Public slices, commercial API terms, and data-sharing agreements need final license language before release.
Who owns this methodology?
Current owner: Samson Cournane. External reviewers should be named only after they are confirmed.
Contacts
Different questions need different response paths.
Contact aliases should point to monitored inboxes with published response windows before launch. Press contact should include a phone number or same-day escalation path.