Skip to content

Repository files navigation

CMS Blue Button 2.0 (cms-blue-button)

About this repository

This is not our API. This repository is an independent, third-party profile of a company's publicly available API surface, maintained by API Evangelist. API Evangelist does not operate, host, resell, or support this company's APIs, and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the company unless stated on the profile.

Where the information came from. Everything here is assembled from material a member of the public can reach with a browser and no credentials — the company's own website, developer portal and documentation, the specifications it publishes for public use (OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, JSON Schema, apis.json, llms.txt and similar), its public repositories, and its public status, pricing and changelog pages. Nothing here is obtained by breaching a system, defeating an access control, or using credentials of any kind.

The rating is an independent assessment. The Kin Score and Agent Readiness rating are independently calculated scores of a company's public API artifacts, produced by API Evangelist against a published rubric. They are not certifications, endorsements, security assessments, or audits, and they score published artifacts — not the quality, safety, or security of the software.

Corrections, re-scores, and removal are free. No partnership, contract, or purchase is required, and you do not need to justify the request.

  • Something wrong? Open an issue on this repository, or email info@apievangelist.com.
  • Published something new? Ask for a re-score and we will re-run the rating.
  • Want the listing taken down? Say so and we will honor it. The profile is reduced to your company name, a factual description, and a link to your own site, and the company is recorded as unrated — never scored zero for having asked.

Response times. Acknowledgement within one business day; removal or restriction within two business days; corrections and re-scores within five business days.

Not from the company, and here with a question? You are welcome here — we would rather be the front line and point you the right way than have a good report go nowhere. What this repository can answer is narrow, though, so it is worth knowing who you are actually looking for:

  • A question about how the API works, an account, billing, or a bug in the service — that is the company's own support, not us. We profile this API; we do not operate it and cannot see your account.
  • A bug in an open-source project we only catalog — file it on that project's own repository. This has happened with a real and correct bug report that reached us instead of the people who could fix it, which helped nobody.
  • Anything about this listing itself — the description, the tags, the rating, a missing or wrong artifact — is ours. Open an issue here.
  • Not sure, or something general about API Evangelist or APIs.io — open an issue on the APIs.io Inbox and we will route it.

This repository contains no software, and we will never ask you to download anything. There is no build, release, installer, or binary here — only text and machine-readable API descriptions, so there is nothing here that can be "corrupt" or need "repairing". Any issue, comment, or email claiming otherwise and offering a download link is not from us and is hostile. Do not follow the link; it is a lure. Report it to GitHub and, if you like, tell us at info@apievangelist.com so we can take it down.

On a security or compliance team? Email info@apievangelist.com with security in the subject line and you will get a person, not a form. We will tell you exactly which public URLs this profile was built from so your team can see the same surface we did, and we will take the listing down on request while you work through it.

Full detail: Where this data comes from

Blue Button 2.0 is the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) API that lets Medicare beneficiaries share their Parts A, B, and D claims data with applications they trust. It is a FHIR R4 (4.0.1) API conforming to the CARIN Blue Button Implementation Guide (CARIN Consumer Directed Payer Data Exchange), serving ExplanationOfBenefit, Patient, and Coverage resources for 60+ million people with Medicare.

The access model is patient-facing and consent-driven: there is no way to bulk-query beneficiaries. Each Medicare enrollee authorizes an application individually through an OAuth 2.0 authorization-code flow (PKCE S256 is mandatory) using their Medicare.gov login, and can decline to share demographic data during that flow. The API is free at every stage. The sandbox at sandbox.bluebutton.cms.gov is fully self-serve, mirrors production endpoints, and ships synthetic data for 10,000 Medicare enrollees. Production access is approval-gated - you draft a public privacy policy and terms of service, apply, and demo your application to the CMS team (a one-hour walkthrough of account creation, authorization, data display, and data-use practices) before production credentials are issued. Access tokens last one hour; one-time-use refresh tokens are only issued to approved 13-month and research application types.

APIs.json: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/cms-blue-button/refs/heads/main/apis.yml

Tags

  • Blue Button
  • CARIN
  • Medicare
  • FHIR
  • Claims Data
  • Patient Access
  • Healthcare
  • Government

Timestamps

  • Created: 2026-07-11
  • Modified: 2026-07-11

APIs

CMS Blue Button 2.0 Explanation of Benefit API

Returns a beneficiary's Medicare Parts A, B, and D claims as FHIR R4 ExplanationOfBenefit resources in a Bundle, conforming to the CARIN Blue Button (CARIN CDPDE) profiles. Supports filtering by patient, claim type (carrier, pde, dme, hha, hospice, inpatient, outpatient, snf), service-date, _lastUpdated, excludeSAMHSA, and paging via _count/startIndex.

Tags

  • Claims Data
  • Explanation of Benefit
  • CARIN
  • FHIR

Properties

CMS Blue Button 2.0 Patient API

Returns the authorized beneficiary's demographic and administrative record as a FHIR R4 Patient resource. Beneficiaries can decline to share demographic data during the Medicare.gov authorization flow, in which case apps fall back to identifiers in the Coverage and ExplanationOfBenefit bundles.

Tags

  • Patient
  • Demographics
  • FHIR
  • Patient Access

Properties

CMS Blue Button 2.0 Coverage API

Returns a beneficiary's Medicare coverage as FHIR R4 Coverage resources in a Bundle - one resource per coverage type (Part A, Part B, Part D) - searched by beneficiary reference with _lastUpdated, _profile, and paging parameters.

Tags

  • Coverage
  • Medicare
  • Enrollment
  • FHIR

Properties

CMS Blue Button 2.0 Authorization and UserInfo API

OAuth 2.0 authorization-code flow with mandatory PKCE (S256) that beneficiaries use to grant an app access to their Medicare data via Medicare.gov login, plus the /v2/connect/userinfo endpoint returning the authorized user's OpenID Connect profile. Access tokens last one hour; one-time-use refresh tokens are issued to approved 13-month and research application types.

Tags

  • OAuth
  • OpenID Connect
  • Consent
  • Patient Access

Properties

Common Properties

Maintainers

FN: Kin Lane Email: kin@apievangelist.com

About

CMS Blue Button 2.0 — independent third-party profile of a public API surface, by API Evangelist. Blue Button 2.0 is the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) API that lets Medicare beneficiaries share their Parts A, B, and D claims data with applications they trust. It is a FHIR R4 API conforming to the CARIN Blue Button Implementation Gu

Topics

Resources

Stars

0 stars

Watchers

0 watching

Forks

Releases

Packages

Contributors