How We Research

Nursing Home Data: CMS Care Compare

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) publishes data on every nursing home that takes Medicare or Medicaid on Medicare Care Compare and in its Provider Data Catalog. Senior Care Help uses two of those files:

• Provider Information: each home's address, phone, beds, ownership and chain, the four star ratings, nurse staffing hours, staff turnover, the date and results of its last standard health inspection, fines and payment denials, the abuse icon, Special Focus status and resident and family councils.
• MDS Quality Measures: measures for long-stay residents drawn from the Minimum Data Set, the assessment every certified home completes for each resident. Each is an average of the four quarters from April 2025 through March 2026.

The current copy is CMS's August 1, 2026 release, downloaded on October 6, 2026, and is refreshed when CMS publishes a new one. Each nursing home page shows the date of its data. Pages show CMS's own ratings and figures and never add scores, reviews, outcomes or claims CMS doesn't make. CMS's Five-Star Quality Rating System page explains how the ratings are built.

What the Star Ratings Mean

CMS gives each home four ratings from 1 to 5 stars. The health inspection rating reflects what state inspectors found. The staffing rating reflects nurse and aide hours per resident and staff turnover. The quality measure rating reflects measures of residents' health and care. The overall rating starts from the health inspection rating and moves up or down with the staffing and quality ratings. The health inspection rating compares a home with others in its own state, because inspections differ from state to state, so treat inspection stars as a comparison within one state.

What Each Filter Means

Each filter in the finder and on state and city pages reads one CMS field. A home appears under a filter only when CMS's data says so. The count is how many of the 14,690 homes match.

CMS Star Ratings

• 4 or 5 stars overall (5,766 homes). CMS rates the home 4 or 5 stars overall, out of 5. CMS field: overall star rating.
• 5 stars overall (2,981 homes). CMS rates the home 5 stars overall, its top rating. CMS field: overall star rating.
• 4+ stars for inspections (4,953 homes). The home's health inspection rating is 4 or 5 stars. CMS bases it on what state inspectors found on recent standard inspections and complaint investigations. CMS field: health inspection rating.
• 4+ stars for staffing (5,245 homes). The home's staffing rating is 4 or 5 stars. CMS bases it on nurse and aide hours per resident, adjusted for how much care residents need, and on staff turnover. CMS field: staffing rating.
• 4+ stars for quality measures (8,309 homes). The home's quality measure rating is 4 or 5 stars, from CMS's measures of residents' health and care. CMS field: quality measure rating.

Inspections and Penalties

• No fines or payment denials (7,915 homes). CMS records no fines and no denials of Medicare or Medicaid payment against the home in its penalty data. CMS field: number of fines; number of payment denials.
• No abuse or Special Focus flag (12,971 homes). The home doesn't carry CMS's abuse icon, which marks a recent citation for abuse, and isn't in or a candidate for CMS's Special Focus program for homes with a persistent record of serious problems. CMS field: abuse icon; Special Focus status.

Dementia Care and Staff

• Antipsychotic use below the national median (7,044 homes). The share of long-stay residents who received an antipsychotic medication is below the national median. CMS field: MDS measure 481.
• Nurse turnover below the national median (6,751 homes). The share of nursing staff who left the home over a year is below the national median. CMS field: total nursing staff turnover.
• Has a family council (1,811 homes). CMS lists a family council, or both a resident and a family council. A family council is a group of residents' relatives who meet to raise concerns with the home. CMS field: resident and family council.

Ownership and Setting

• Nonprofit (2,868 homes). CMS lists the ownership as nonprofit: a nonprofit corporation, church-related or other nonprofit. CMS field: ownership type.
• Government-owned (945 homes). CMS lists the ownership as government: a state, county, city, hospital district or federal owner. CMS field: ownership type.
• Part of a continuing care community (1,547 homes). CMS lists the home as part of a continuing care retirement community, where independent living, assisted living and nursing care share one campus. CMS field: continuing care retirement community.
• Inside a hospital (591 homes). The nursing home is located inside a hospital. CMS field: provider resides in hospital.

Payment

• Medicaid certified (14,151 homes). The home is certified for Medicaid, alone or with Medicare. Certification means it can bill Medicaid; ask whether a Medicaid bed is open. CMS field: provider type.
• Medicare certified (14,443 homes). The home is certified for Medicare, alone or with Medicaid, so it can provide Medicare-covered skilled nursing care after a qualifying hospital stay. CMS field: provider type.

A filter tells you what CMS recorded, not whether a home has an open bed this week or takes your specific Medicaid plan. Call the home to confirm before you visit.

Filtered Pages by State and City

Some filters also have their own pages for each state, and for cities with enough matching homes. Each page states its rule:

• Highest-Rated Nursing Homes: CMS's overall star rating is 4 or 5 (out of 5). The overall rating combines health inspections, staffing and quality measures.
• Nursing Homes That Accept Medicaid: CMS lists the home as certified for Medicaid (or for both Medicare and Medicaid). Certification means the home can bill Medicaid; ask whether a Medicaid bed is open.
• Nonprofit Nursing Homes: CMS lists the home's ownership as nonprofit (a nonprofit corporation, church-related or other nonprofit).
• Nursing Homes With Low Antipsychotic Use: The home's share of long-stay residents who received an antipsychotic medication (CMS measure 481, four-quarter average) is below the national median.

National Medians

Two filters, and many figures on nursing home pages, compare a home with the national median: the middle value across every home with a reported figure in this CMS release. Half of homes are above it and half below. These are the medians the site uses now:

• Antipsychotic use among long-stay residents: 13%
• Total nursing staff turnover: 45%
• Registered nurse turnover: 42%
• Nursing hours per resident per day: 3.7 hours
• Registered nurse hours per resident per day: 0.6 hours
• Nurse aide hours per resident per day: 2.2 hours
• Weekend nursing hours per resident per day: 3.3 hours

Each nursing home page also compares the home's long-stay quality measures with these national medians. A lower value is better for every one of them:

• Received an antipsychotic medication: 13% of long-stay residents nationally (CMS measure 481)
• Received an antianxiety or hypnotic medication: 18% of long-stay residents nationally (CMS measure 452)
• Had a fall with major injury: 2.8% of long-stay residents nationally (CMS measure 410)
• Have pressure ulcers: 4.2% of long-stay residents nationally (CMS measure 479)
• Lost too much weight: 4.7% of long-stay residents nationally (CMS measure 404)
• Were physically restrained: 0.0% of long-stay residents nationally (CMS measure 409)
• Have depressive symptoms: 3.6% of long-stay residents nationally (CMS measure 408)
• Needed more help with daily activities over time: 13% of long-stay residents nationally (CMS measure 401)

The medians are recalculated at each data refresh, so they move as CMS's figures change.

How Lists Are Sorted

State, city and filtered pages list homes highest-rated first: by CMS's overall star rating, then by the health inspection rating when two homes tie, then alphabetically. The finder sorts by straight-line distance from the ZIP code or location you search. "Nearby" homes on a nursing home page are the closest by measured distance. No home can pay to move up.

The phone number on a listing is the home's own number from CMS. Senior Care Help never swaps in tracked or call-center numbers.

Which Pages Appear in Google

Every city with at least one nursing home has its own page (6,912 cities). A page with only a few homes adds little to a Google search, so city pages with fewer than 10 homes, and filtered state and city pages with fewer than 15, ask Google not to index them. They stay open to you and to Bing. Today 143 city pages and 194 of 385 filtered pages meet the bar.

Individual nursing home pages ask Google not to index them for now. There are 14,690 of them, each built from the same CMS fields, and Google tends to pass over large sets of similar pages; the state and city pages carry the same facts in a form Google can use. Every nursing home page stays open to you and to Bing, and you reach each one from its city page.

State Facts: Official State Sources

State pages draw on each state's own official pages. For each state, the research records the agency that licenses assisted living and the license names it uses; whether memory care has its own license or certification and what the rules require, such as staff dementia training and secured units; the state's facility search or roster; the agency that inspects nursing homes and how to file a complaint; the Long-Term Care Ombudsman; the state aging agency and its Area Agency on Aging locator; Medicaid's nursing home income and asset rules and its home and community-based waivers; and caregiver support and adult day programs.

Each fact carries a link to the official page it came from and the date it was checked. State facts are checked again at least once a year, and sooner when a state changes a program. Federal Medicaid figures, such as the spousal impoverishment standards, come from CMS's yearly bulletin on Medicaid.gov.

Guides: Federal Agencies and the Law

• Nursing homes and Medicare: CMS and Medicare.gov for skilled nursing facility coverage, hospice, home health and the star ratings, and the federal rules for nursing homes in the Code of Federal Regulations for residents' rights.
• Medicaid: Medicaid.gov for nursing facility coverage, home and community-based services waivers and spousal protections, plus each state's Medicaid agency.
• Aging services and residents' rights: the Administration for Community Living for the Eldercare Locator, the National Family Caregiver Support Program and the Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program.
• Aging and dementia: the National Institute on Aging for types of care, dementia and caregiving.
• Veterans: the Department of Veterans Affairs for VA long-term care, state veterans homes and Aid and Attendance.
• Medicines: FDA-approved drug labels only, including the boxed warning on antipsychotics for older adults with dementia.

Each figure carries its year and source.

Sources We Never Use

Senior living referral and placement companies, facility marketing, review sites, news stories, forums and Wikipedia are never used as sources. They can be useful to read, but they aren't where a fact on this site comes from.

What We Don't Do

The site doesn't assess anyone's memory or health, doesn't rate or review homes itself and doesn't recommend a facility, treatment or legal step for any one person. Guides explain how care works and how to find and pay for it. Decisions about one person's care belong with them, their family and their doctor.

Who Does This Work

The research is done by the Senior Care Help Editorial Team. It records each fact with its official source and checked date, and automated checks confirm that figures trace back to those records and that internal links work before a page is published. The team doesn't include clinicians or lawyers and doesn't give medical, legal or financial advice. The editorial policy has the full standards.

How Corrections Work

Nursing home figures come from CMS, so changes to them go through CMS. A nursing home that finds an error in its own data works through CMS and its state survey agency, the state office that inspects nursing homes for CMS. Disagreements about an inspection finding go through the state survey agency's dispute process. Once CMS publishes the corrected data, it appears here at the next refresh. If you have a concern about care in a home, contact your state survey agency or the Long-Term Care Ombudsman.

For anything else, such as a state fact that has changed, a guide that looks wrong or a broken link, use the contact form. Include the page and, if you can, the official source that shows the right detail. Every report is checked against the official source before a page changes.

Pages give information, not medical, legal or financial advice. If someone is in danger, call 911. For free help finding local aging services, call the Eldercare Locator at 1-800-677-1116.