[SOLVED] Latest Nursing Home Compare data-set returning no data

Latest Nursing Home Compare data-set returning no data

Just a few days ago I had some help getting data from the Nursing Home Compare data-set (also visible here) via the 2.1 endpoint.

I spent a good deal of time pinging the data and running tests on sorting and the like. All was well until yesterday morning. Now all my requests come back empty. But my code hasn't changed.

According to the Nursing Home Compare opening page and the "Dataset Snapshots," the new data-set was deployed yesterday morning (May 25, 2016 @ 10:28AM (EST?))

The 2.0 endpoint returns nothing on a basic query:

https://data.medicare.gov/resource/4pq5-n9py.json?$where=within_circle(location,43.0171854,-78.9627624,16093.44)

Neither does the 2.1 endpoint (this is the URL I had used in the last issue and which I know was returning data):

https://data.medicare.gov/resource/b27b-2uc7.json?$where=within_circle(location,43.0171854,-78.9627624,16093.44)&$order=distance_in_meters(location,%20%27POINT%20(-78.9627624%2043.0171854)%27)
(without the order clause, just in case) https://data.medicare.gov/resource/b27b-2uc7.json?$where=within_circle(location,43.0171854,-78.9627624,16093.44)

I see no notes on the Nursing Home Compare page that anything has changed in the data nor in the API. I also am not getting any error messages.

So my question is really two parts:

Did something change in the API or data?
Where can I find information about these changes (or be notified when it happens again)?

Solution

It looks like when they refreshed the dataset there they didn't properly populate the Location column you're using in your within_circle queries. The data is there, but since the location column is empty you won't get any results.

I verified this by running an location IS NOT NULL query on that dataset and got back the same results:

https://data.medicare.gov/resource/4pq5-n9py.json?$where=location%20IS%20NOT%20NULL

I'll open a ticket with our support team and have them reach out to the data.medicare.gov team and see if we can get this fixed. My apologies for the trouble!