Methodology

The spine is the Texas license roster

Every agency page begins with a row in the HHSC Directory of Home and Community Support Services Agencies (HCSSA), titled as an active license as of November 9, 2026, and downloaded from the official HHSC Excel directory. We include a row when the “Services Provided” field includes hospice (including hospice alternate delivery sites and in-patient hospice). Parent agencies, branches, and alternate delivery sites are kept as separate records. We do not treat the county of the listed address as a service area.

One clearly invalid placeholder row (a name marked “do not use” / “invalid account”) is excluded. A small number of rows still show a status of expired or renewal in process even though the workbook is labeled as an active-license directory; we show those statuses as they appear, rather than dropping or relabeling them.

After that filter, this build includes 1,730 hospice locations: 1,316 parent agencies, 2 branches, and 412 alternate delivery sites, in 140 counties and 323 cities.

Medicare-certified and licensed-only

We parse the roster’s Medicare number field and, when the number is a hospice CCN, pad it to six characters. Rows with a hospice CCN are labeled Medicare-certified on this site. Rows without one are labeled licensed only. We never fold those two groups into a single count, and we do not invent a Medicare number.

How CMS data is joined

When a hospice CCN on the roster matches a CMS Certification Number in the Texas rows of the Hospice General Information file (dataset yc9t-dgbk, released August 26, 2026), we attach the CMS quality measures (252m-zfp9), CAHPS Hospice Survey results (gxki-hrr8), and ZIP service areas (95rg-2usp) that share that CCN. Quality, survey results, and ZIP lists are published by CMS at the certified-provider (CCN) level. If a parent, branch, and alternate delivery site share a number, they will show the same CMS figures, and the page will say so.

In this build, 1,011 of 1,021 certified rows matched a Texas row in the CMS general information file. 10 certified rows had a number we could not find in those Texas CMS rows. 318 Texas CCNs appear in CMS general information but not on the current HHSC hospice rows we display. We do not add CMS-only records to the directory. The spine remains the state license list.

What we show, and what we will not invent

Measure values, footnotes, date ranges, and CAHPS star ratings are displayed as published. Texas and national averages come from the CMS state and national files, labeled as such. We do not create a composite “Texas score,” a ranking, or user reviews. The CMS composite process measure and the Hospice Care Index are CMS’s own published measures; we attribute them and leave them unchanged.

CMS ZIP service areas are a real service-area source. We use them for ZIP search and for the service-area list on a provider page. We do not describe a license county as a service area.

The license list does not say which hospices offer a separate palliative care program. We say that clearly rather than infer it from a name or a hunch.

We do not scrape TULIP. Each provider page links out so you can verify the live state record. “View on Medicare.gov” appears only when a Medicare number is present. Administrator email addresses, though they appear in the public roster, are not shown on this site.

Public records can lag. Facilities have appeal rights; a successful appeal can change what a later file will show. This directory is not medical, legal, or coverage advice, and it is not an endorsement of any agency. HospiceLookup is not affiliated with HHSC, CMS, or Medicare.

The scripts that refresh these files live in this site’s repository so a later build can be reproduced from official downloads.