Data Sources
Every record on CareLookup is sourced from an official state agency — via an open data portal, a public API, or a public web record when that's all a state publishes. Each facility page links back to the originating record.
Methodology
Each state has a dedicated connector. Connectors normalize the incoming fields into a shared schema — facility type, licensing status, inspection type, violation severity — and preserve the original record as JSON for auditability. Deduplication is keyed on (state, source_id) so re-runs update existing rows rather than creating duplicates.
Connector runs are logged for observability and re-run on a recurring schedule. “Last updated” in the table above is the most recent last_updated_at timestamp on any facility in that state — the freshest signal we have that a state's data flowed through to our database.
States without open data feeds are harder. Some publish records only through ASP.NET WebForms or ArcGIS map viewers; some put violation text behind JavaScript and anti-bot gates. We build each connector to the lightest-touch approach that works — no headless browsers where a reverse-engineered API will do — which means coverage varies as state portals change.