Methodology and sources

Nursing Home Record exists to make public nursing home records easier to find and read. We do not collect our own data, and we do not rate or rank facilities. Everything we publish comes from records published by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), reproduced as published. This page explains where that data comes from and the rules we hold ourselves to.

Our sources

We use the four public CMS provider-data files that describe every Medicare- and Medicaid-certified nursing home in the country:

• Provider Information: each facility’s identifying details, CMS Five-Star ratings, reported staffing hours, turnover, bed counts, ownership type, and chain membership.
• Health Deficiencies: the citations recorded by state survey inspectors during on-site inspections.
• Penalties: fines and payment denials recorded by CMS.
• Ownership: owners and managers associated with each facility.

These files are published by CMS through its provider-data service. You can view the same source data on the CMS Provider Information dataset and the CMS nursing home datasets, or on Medicare Care Compare.

Refresh cadence

CMS updates these files on a monthly cycle. We resolve the current data files from CMS on each refresh and stamp what we publish with the “data as of” date that CMS assigns to the release. The data currently referenced is as of 2026-08-01. Because the records change every month, a figure you see today may differ from what CMS publishes next month; the stamp tells you which release it reflects.

Verbatim reporting

We reproduce CMS records as published. We do not summarize a facility’s record in our own words, we do not characterize a facility as good or bad, and we do not build our own rankings. The only ratings on this site are the CMS Five-Star ratings, shown as CMS assigns them. Where a value is blank in the CMS file, we show that it is not available rather than filling it in. The aim is simple: show the number, cite the source, and let you judge.

Corrections

Our pages mirror the CMS record. If a figure looks wrong, the underlying record at CMS is the place it needs to be fixed, and we explain how to pursue that on our corrections page. If we have made a reproduction error, so that our page does not match the current CMS record, we want to know and will fix it. You can reach us at corrections@nursinghomerecord.com, and our corrections and takedown policy describes the process and our response commitment.