How the list is ordered

The places on your results are listed in the order you choose: by distance, by lowest cost, by how much of your visit has a price, or by a compatible total.

The orders

You choose the order with the Sort menu above the results.

Distance
Nearest first. For an office visit, places whose clinicians provide general medical care (primary care, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, group practices and health centers) come before offices of one other specialty, each set nearest first. For any other service, a place with its own published price for it (its price file, or a negotiated rate a plan published for it) comes first, then a place with an average billed charge CMS reports for it, then a place with only Rede’s estimate, each set nearest first. Places are listed by straight-line distance from the place you searched, not by driving time. If you searched by state only, distance is measured from a central point in that state. This is the order you get until you choose another.
Lowest cost
Lowest first. Places are listed by the price on each place’s card: your estimated share if you chose a plan and Rede could apply it, otherwise the price the card leads with. Lowest cost needs a service to price. With none chosen, places are listed by distance.
Most of your visit priced here
Places where the most selected services have an amount come first. Each amount keeps its own kind and source, including cash prices. A tie uses the existing lowest-cost order. This count does not establish plan coverage or confirm that a service is offered. With a single service, this uses Lowest cost.
Lowest total for your visit
Complete compatible server totals come first, from lowest to highest. Partial subtotals follow by services included, then by amount. Refused totals follow. This order stays across the evidence groups. Every subtotal names its gaps. A sum of separately estimated shares is not an ordered visit liability; each service used the same deductible progress. With a single service, this follows Lowest cost.

How lowest cost is worked out

Rede finds the price each place's card shows, for every place in your search area that fits your filters and could have a price for the service, and lists the places by that price, from the lowest up. Only then is the list cut into pages. In a very large search, Rede does this for a set number of the nearest places.

Where a card shows a range of rates the place published for other plans, the lowest rate in that range is the price used.

If two places have the same price, the one whose price rests on a negotiated rate comes first, then one that rests on a published or cash price, then one that rests on a billed charge, then a Rede estimate. If they are still level, the nearer place comes first.

A place whose card shows no usable price comes after every place with one, nearest first.

For a visit with several services, Rede looks for places using every service, then checks each place it found for the whole list. Lowest cost uses an established total where Rede could add the services, and otherwise the first service's price. For services you state are separate, Rede checks that the amounts it would add are compatible, adds them, and names every service it left out; that statement cannot override known overlaps. Without it, a list too long to price all at once has no combined total. Discovery pages may leave more matching places unchecked; the count says so when it is only a lower bound.

What comes first

Once you have chosen a service, the list holds only places that could have a price for it. Every hospital is listed. Any other place is listed only if Rede can show something for the service there: a price the place published, a formula it published for your plan's rate, or a price Rede can work out for that place itself from a Medicare rate. That Medicare rate is an office rate for an office, urgent care or imaging center, or a dialysis rate for a dialysis center. Clinics, pharmacies and other places Rede has no way to price are left out.

Under Distance and Lowest cost, the list has up to three groups, in this order:

Places where Rede could make an estimate for you.
Places that published an amount for this service, where Rede could not make an estimate from it for you.
Places where Rede found no usable price for this service.

Inside each group, the order you chose applies. Under Lowest cost, places in the first two groups are listed by the price on their cards, from the lowest up, and places in the last group, which have no usable price, are listed nearest first. Which places fit on one page is decided by price across the first two groups together. A hospital with no usable price is still listed, after the others, because it is still a place you can get care.

Lowest total for your visit uses only the server's eligible totals. Complete totals come first, then partial subtotals by the number of services included and then amount; refused totals follow. This order stays across the groups. A partial subtotal never becomes a full total because its amount is smaller. Each share is a standalone estimate using the same deductible progress, so their sum can differ from an ordered visit calculation.

Most of your visit priced here keeps that order across the groups: a place with more services priced can come before one whose first service has stronger evidence. Read each service's kind and source; the count alone does not establish plan coverage or confirm that a service is offered.

What the order uses

These are the inputs the order uses today:

Where the place is, and where you searched.
For Lowest total for your visit, the server-established aggregate, its included services and its completeness. A personal separate-services statement is an assumption, and known overlaps still refuse.
The services you chose. Lowest cost needs a service; Most of your visit priced here counts services with a returned amount.
How you pay: the plan you chose or paying without insurance, and what you told Rede you have already paid this year.
The price on that place’s card: read from its published price file or from federal files when they carry a price for it, otherwise worked out by Rede from a Medicare reference price and labeled as a Rede estimate.

The filters you set (how far, in-network only, has a cash price, the kind of place) decide which places are listed. They do not change the order.

What an estimate is, and the price types behind one, are explained in How prices work.

What the order never uses

Rede's rule is that nothing can be bought to change where a place appears. None of these is ever used to order the list:

Payment of any kind.
Advertising.
A partnership with Rede.
Who funds Rede.
Who you are: your name, your account or anything else that identifies you.