CancerDrs

Editorial Policy

Effective Date: April 20, 2026

Our approach

CancerDrs is an educational data aggregator and patient-navigation resource operated by MiniGig LLC. We are a publisher, not a clinical advisor. We compile publicly available data from authoritative federal and governmental sources and publish explanatory content that cites primary sources. Our goal is to help patients and caregivers orient themselves to the U.S. cancer-care landscape — not to tell anyone what to do about their diagnosis or treatment. For that, see our Medical Disclaimer.

Primary data sources

  • ClinicalTrials.gov — U.S. National Library of Medicine registry of clinical trials (API v2). Refreshed weekly.
  • NPI Registry (CMS) — federal registry of licensed U.S. healthcare providers. Refreshed quarterly.
  • CMS Hospital Compare / Provider Data — hospital-level quality metrics published by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Refreshed quarterly.
  • National Cancer Institute — the NCI's list of NCI-Designated Cancer Centers. Refreshed quarterly.
  • SEER — the NCI's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program for cancer incidence and survival statistics. Refreshed annually.
  • FDA — FDA-approved oncology drug listings, where referenced. Refreshed quarterly.

United States federal-government works are not subject to domestic copyright (17 U.S.C. § 105). The underlying agencies retain whatever rights they may have in their trademarks, service marks, and compilations. We aggregate, transform, and link back to the primary source for every factual claim.

Sourcing standards

  • Every data figure, designation, credential, eligibility criterion, quality metric, or statistic shown on a data page links to the authoritative source.
  • Every factual claim in a guide page is supported by a primary source (peer-reviewed publication, federal agency, recognized medical society, or official clinical-trial registration).
  • We do not publish claims we cannot source. When a claim cannot be cleanly sourced, we either cut it or clearly flag it as opinion or contextual framing.
  • Where appropriate, a reviewer's byline appears alongside the author byline. Reviewers are independent clinicians or subject-matter experts. Reviewer inclusion does not constitute medical advice from the reviewer to any reader.

How we label content

  • Data pages — directory pages, trial listings, cancer-center profiles. A "last checked" or "last refreshed" date is shown on every page. Every figure is cited.
  • Guide pages — patient guides, explainers, question-lists. Author byline, reviewer byline (where applicable), sources list, and publication / updated date.
  • Survivor stories and caregiver accounts — submitted by real patients or caregivers, with bylines. Clearly labeled as individual experience, not medical advice, and not representative of any other patient's likely outcome.
  • Sponsored placements and advertising — clearly marked as "Sponsored," "Featured," "Advertisement," or equivalent in accordance with FTC Endorsement Guides (16 C.F.R. Part 255).
  • Affiliate links — disclosed on the page where they appear. We may earn a commission if you engage with a service via our link.

Editorial independence; church-and-state separation

We keep a strict separation between editorial content and commercial relationships:

  • Sponsorship fees are flat-fee subscriptions set in advance. They are not tied to the volume, value, or outcome of referrals, in a manner intended to comply with the safe harbor for referral services at 42 C.F.R. § 1001.952(f) under the federal Anti-Kickback Statute.
  • Payment of a sponsorship fee never affects the factual directory data we publish about any physician, institution, or trial. It never buys a favorable review.
  • Sponsors do not see editorial content before publication, do not direct coverage or topic selection, and do not have veto rights over published content. Sponsored posts — where we accept them — are independently reviewed, labeled as sponsored, and must meet our factual-sourcing standards.
  • Our directory-inclusion criteria are public and objective (valid NPI or federal registration; active status where applicable). A provider cannot be removed from a non-sponsored listing in exchange for payment, nor added to a non-sponsored listing in exchange for payment.

What we avoid

  • Subjective "best doctor" or "best hospital" rankings. Where we compare, we use objective designations (NCI-Designated Cancer Center status, CMS star ratings, board specialty, residency/fellowship training) with citation.
  • Medical advice or treatment recommendations to any individual reader.
  • Claims we cannot cite to a primary source.
  • Manufacturer, sponsor, or affiliate claims presented as independent fact.
  • Sensationalism — especially around prognosis, survival statistics, or "breakthrough" therapies.

AI use

Portions of the educational content on the Site are drafted with the assistance of artificial-intelligence tools and reviewed against primary sources before publication. Our standards for AI-assisted content are the same as for any other content:

  • Every factual claim must be sourceable to a primary authority.
  • We do not publish speculative, unverified, or AI-hallucinated claims.
  • We do not train any third-party AI or machine-learning model using personal information our users submit to us.
  • AI use is disclosed on any page where AI drafted a substantial portion of the content.

AI-assisted content may still contain errors. Readers should treat all information on the Site as educational and independently verify any fact before acting on it.

Physician-payment transparency pages

Certain pages of the Site republish payment-disclosure data that drug and device manufacturers submit to CMS under the Physician Payments Sunshine Act (42 U.S.C. § 1320a-7h). Our editorial posture on those pages is deliberate and narrow:

  • We publish verbatim figures, not judgments. Dollar figures, counts, and categories are republished from CMS disclosures with citation. We do not characterize any individual physician as having a conflict of interest, taking a kickback, acting corruptly, or any other pejorative framing. The editorial product is transparency, not accusation.
  • We never editorialize per-physician. Any sentence about a specific physician on these pages is a factual statement of what was disclosed about that physician to CMS, presented alongside a link to CMS's primary record.
  • We split research from general payments. Research payments compensate clinical-trial site work and are not, on their own, a conflict. Our pages distinguish research funding from general payments (meals, speaker fees, consulting, travel, etc.) so readers can see the shape of the physician's disclosure, not a misleading single number.
  • We exclude categories that would misattribute money. CMS's manufacturer-summary file includes "Associated Research" (money routed to an institution where the physician is named principal investigator but did not personally receive it) and "Ownership/investment" (equity value, not payments). We exclude both from per-physician "largest payer" totals. A recurring integrity audit runs in our data pipeline and blocks publication if any per-physician manufacturer sum exceeds that physician's reported payment total.
  • Corrections go through CMS. Physicians who believe a figure is wrong file a dispute with the reporting manufacturer via the CMS Open Payments review workflow; the manufacturer submits the correction; CMS republishes. Our next refresh adopts the correction. We do not adjudicate the accuracy of federal-agency records.
  • What we do not do. We do not rank physicians. We do not maintain "worst" or "most conflicted" lists. We do not accept consideration to alter, suppress, or remove accurate federal-agency disclosures. We do not respond to demands from physicians, their counsel, or their agents to suppress accurate republished disclosures outside the CMS process.
  • Sponsorship does not alter transparency display. Payment-transparency data about a physician, practice, or institution is shown with identical treatment regardless of whether that party is a paid sponsor of the Site. A sponsor's CMS Open Payments record is displayed, totaled, and linked to primary sources the same way as any non-sponsor's. Buying a listing, featured placement, or any other advertising product does not reduce, soften, hide, delay, or otherwise modify the federal-agency disclosures we republish about the sponsor or anyone affiliated with the sponsor. The reverse is equally true: paying us is not a precondition for accurate, non-defamatory, primary-source-cited disclosure.

Full methodology: /transparency/methodology/. Legal posture: Terms of Service §12 and Medical Disclaimer §14.

Conflicts of interest

MiniGig LLC operates CancerDrs as an independent publisher. We do not accept consideration in any form (cash, equity, in-kind services, travel, or reciprocal promotion) in exchange for a favorable review, a higher ranking, or altered factual data. Reviewers and contributors disclose any relevant financial or professional relationships, and we will append the disclosure to any content where a meaningful conflict exists. If you become aware of a conflict we should know about, please contact [email protected].

Updates and "last checked" dates

  • Automated data pipelines refresh directory and trial data on defined schedules (weekly for trials; quarterly for oncologist, CMS, NCI, and FDA data; annual for SEER).
  • Guide pages carry a "published," "last updated," or "last checked" date in the page metadata; the sitemap reflects the same date so search engines see accurate freshness.
  • We update guides when a cited source materially changes, when regulation or standard-of-care changes, or when a reader flags an error.

Corrections policy

If you believe a page contains a factual error, a stale citation, or a listing that should be removed, please email [email protected] with (a) the URL, (b) the specific claim or listing in question, and (c) a primary source or evidence of the correction. We will evaluate each request and, where we agree, publish the correction, update the "last checked" date, and — for substantive corrections — note the change in a correction log. We are under no obligation to change content that is factually accurate and sourced from a public authority.

Feedback and complaints

For editorial feedback, ethical concerns, or complaints, contact [email protected]. For privacy matters, see our Privacy Policy. For legal notices (including DMCA), see our Terms of Service.