[ PRESS & CITATIONS ]
The work, and where it's cited.
Everything on this page is checkable. Every citation links to the source, and every number comes from data you can inspect yourself. If you're working a story on hospital prices or Virginia's criminal courts, this is the shortest path to what I can back up.
[ COVERAGE ]
[ CITED ON WIKIPEDIA ]
VirginiaCourtFile research is cited as a source in these English Wikipedia articles. Each link goes to the live article, where the citation can be verified in the references.
[ ORIGINAL RESEARCH ]
Published reports built from 1.68 million 2025 Virginia case records, free to cite with attribution. The full methodology, with data source, filters, and denominators, is disclosed here.
[ FACTS YOU CAN PRINT ]
Re-derived from the underlying data before publishing. Last verified September 5, 2026.
87
Hospitals with published pricing on HospitalCost.com (VA + NC)
139K+
Payer-negotiated insurance rates on HospitalCost.com
17
Federal data sources joined per hospital
1.89M
2025 Virginia case records behind VirginiaCourtFile.com
125
Virginia jurisdictions covered
2,099
Virginia defense attorneys with published case records
[ CORRECTIONS ]
Numbers I have restated in public, newest first. I found each of these myself; none came from a reader. Each one changed a check, not just a number. If you find one I missed, email me.
- HospitalCost.comSeptember 5, 2026
Restated the headline insurance-versus-cash figure from all plan types to commercial plans only, and the number moved from about 4 in 10 to about 6 in 10. The earlier figure blended Medicare Advantage and Medicaid rates, which price near Medicare, into a claim about commercial insurance. The two numbers answer different questions. The current one says which.
Scope note on the homepage - VirginiaCourtFile.comJuly 30, 2026
Charge-by-jurisdiction pages printed a filed-case count behind the words "were resolved." On circuit-court pages the filed count ran more than double the resolved count. Every rate on the site now names its resolved denominator.
Methodology: resolved cases - This siteJuly 4, 2026
The homepage card said 70 hospitals and 120K insurance rates. The real figures that day were 84 and 110K. The card had not been touched since a cleanup removed hospitals filed under temporary IDs. Fixed the card, and started re-deriving every number on this site the day it goes out. Both figures have moved again since; the current ones are above.
Facts you can print, above - VirginiaCourtFile.comJune 13, 2026
Plea rates that included General District Court were a pipeline default, not a measurement: district records do not say whether a conviction came by plea or by bench trial. Restated circuit-only across the reports, the charge pages, and every attorney page.
Methodology: plea rate
[ BOILERPLATE & ASSETS ]
Short bio
Richard Callaghan is the founder of HospitalCost.com, an independent hospital price transparency tool covering Virginia and North Carolina, and VirginiaCourtFile.com, a public-records analysis of Virginia's criminal courts. Both are built solo on public data, with methodology disclosed. By day he is a Senior Marketing Manager at Microsoft. He lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Usage
- Headshot: download (JPG)
- Attribute site data to HospitalCost.com or VirginiaCourtFile.com with a link.
- Statistics should be cited from the project sites, which carry the methodology and refresh dates.
- Name spelling: Richard Callaghan (two a's in Callaghan).
Working a story?
I respond fastest to specific questions: a charge, a hospital, a jurisdiction, a number you need checked. Data pulls for journalists are free.
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