14,699 Medicare-certified nursing homes — CMS overall star rating, staffing data, and Special Focus Facility transparency on every facility.
Per-facility CMS overall star rating, health inspection rating, staffing rating, quality measure rating, ownership type, certified bed counts, and Special Focus Facility / candidate status — every column traced to the CMS Care Compare NH Provider Information source dataset.
See the Audit Pack →
85 nursing homes carry CMS's Special Focus Facility designation in the current snapshot, plus 441 SFF candidates — facilities CMS has flagged for repeat health-inspection deficiencies. The SFF list is published quarterly and is the most-actionable consumer-facing quality signal in the dataset.
Source: CMS Care Compare · NH Provider Info (4pq5-n9py) · Published 2026-04-29 · Snapshot 2026-05-07.
Medicare-Certified Nursing Homes
Every SNF + NF in the CMS Care Compare NH Provider Information dataset (4pq5-n9py) — identity, ownership, certification, bed counts, star ratings.
Overall + Component ★
CMS Overall, Health Inspection, Staffing, and Quality Measures ratings (1–5 ★ each), plus Reported RN HPRD and total nurse HPRD per resident per day from the PBJ daily nurse staffing dataset.
Special Focus Facilities
Active SFF designations + 441 candidates flagged. CMS publishes the SFF list quarterly; Fonteum surfaces it as a per-facility column, not a footnote.
Federal data gap on nursing home ownership won't close — and Fonteum maps what CMS doesn't.
of CMS top-10-chain ownership percentages are missing in the CMS SNF All Owners dataset. The Trump administration suspended the mechanism that was supposed to close the gap. PE-owned nursing homes face higher resident mortality and greater bankruptcy risk.
53 states + territories with Medicare-certified nursing homes
Every state with enough Medicare-certified nursing homes to report has its own page; the data is also in the snapshot and audit-pack export.
Federal healthcare exclusions for individual practitioners and entities. The LEIE × NH Provider Information cross-join is the audit-pack export endpoint's compliance signal — when a CCN's owners or staff appear in LEIE, the audit-pack envelope flags it explicitly.
See the OIG LEIE surface →What CMS health inspections found, at facility grain
Across the current snapshot, CMS state-survey teams recorded health-deficiency citations against Medicare- and Medicaid-certified nursing homes, from surveys conducted between 2017-03-23 and 2026-03-25. Most citations describe a potential for harm; a minority describe proven injury. Fonteum keeps every citation at its facility (CMS Certification Number) and survey date — the grain a national average erases.
Inspection density by state — top 6 of 50+ jurisdictions
Citation density measures how many deficiencies each cited facility carries — a function of both care quality and how aggressively a state surveys. Maryland and California record the most citations per facility; their harm-level share differs sharply, which is why the raw count alone never tells the story.
| State | Citations | Cited facilities | Per facility | Harm-level % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MD | 11,219 | 220 | 51.00 | 1.86% |
| CA | 57,899 | 1,162 | 49.83 | 2.63% |
| WA | 9,575 | 194 | 49.36 | 4.38% |
| NM | 3,331 | 68 | 48.99 | 4.59% |
| WV | 5,305 | 123 | 43.13 | 3.15% |
| VA | 11,019 | 287 | 38.39 | 3.48% |
Related Fonteum data: the Payroll-Based Journal staffing dataset pairs each facility's deficiencies with its nurse hours per resident-day, and the SNF ownership records link citations to the chains and investors behind a facility. Federal exclusions appear on the OIG sanctions surface.
Methodology
Figures are computed directly from CMS primary files — not from an aggregator. The pipeline runs in five stages: (1) source acquisition from data.cms.gov, (2) entity resolution on the CMS Certification Number, (3) survey-date join across the deficiency and provider-information files, (4) quality checks against published CMS row counts, and (5) chain attestation. Each value is asserted and chained, then labeled with its provenance — attested, signed, or provenance-tracked — never with unbacked trust language.
These four headline fields are the start of the 14-tuple provenance chain. The full 14-field contract — through entity_id, confidence_tier, chain_link_hash, and attested_at — is documented on the Care Compare nursing-home methodology page.
Source comparison: grain, cadence, and access
The same CMS files underlie most nursing-home data products. What differs is the grain you can reach, how often it refreshes, and whether a machine — or an AI system — can cite it.
| Source | Data grain | Cadence | Access | Provenance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fonteum | Facility-level (CCN) | Monthly | Free, machine-readable | 14-tuple chain |
| CMS Care Compare | Facility-level | Monthly | Free, one facility at a time | None (raw file) |
| Definitive Healthcare | Facility / system | Annual | Paid subscription | None |
| AHRQ | State / national | Annual | Research request | None |
Nursing home data — common questions
- How many US nursing homes have been cited for health deficiencies?
- CMS health-inspection surveys recorded 418,148 deficiency citations across 14,635 Medicare- and Medicaid-certified nursing homes in the current snapshot, covering surveys from March 2017 through March 2026. Each citation names a specific facility by CMS Certification Number, with its survey date, regulatory tag, and scope-severity letter.
- What share of nursing home deficiencies involve actual harm or immediate jeopardy?
- Of 418,148 citations, 23,375 (5.59%) carry a scope-severity code of G through L, meaning actual harm or immediate jeopardy to residents. Of those, 9,862 reached immediate-jeopardy level (codes J, K, or L), the most serious category CMS assigns. The remainder reflect potential for harm without a proven injury.
- Which states cite nursing homes most often?
- Maryland leads at 51.0 citations per cited facility, followed by California (49.8), Washington (49.4), New Mexico (49.0), and West Virginia (43.1). High citation density reflects inspection intensity as much as care quality: more aggressive state survey programs record more findings per facility. Fonteum publishes the per-facility detail behind every state figure.
- What is a Special Focus Facility?
- A Special Focus Facility is a nursing home CMS has flagged for a persistent pattern of serious health-inspection deficiencies. CMS publishes the SFF list and a candidate list quarterly. Flagged facilities must show sustained improvement or face termination from Medicare and Medicaid. Fonteum renders SFF status as a per-facility column, not a footnote.
- How current is Fonteum's nursing home data?
- This page reflects the CMS Care Compare snapshot dated May 25, 2026, with health-inspection surveys spanning March 2017 through March 2026. CMS refreshes star ratings monthly and the deficiency file on a rolling basis; Fonteum re-pulls the source on the same cadence. Every figure carries its snapshot date in the provenance strip.
- How does Fonteum's nursing home data differ from Medicare's Care Compare?
- Both draw from the same CMS primary files, but Medicare Care Compare shows one facility at a time with no bulk export and no provenance trail. Fonteum publishes facility-level data in machine-readable form, free, with a 14-tuple chain of custody linking each number to its CMS dataset, snapshot date, and methodology version.
- Can I trace a specific nursing home statistic back to its source?
- Yes. Every quantitative claim on this page links to a provenance record naming the CMS dataset, the issuing agency, the snapshot date, and the methodology version. You can cross-check any facility at Medicare.gov Care Compare or download the underlying CMS deficiency file from data.cms.gov. Nothing here is asserted without a traceable source.
Sources
- Nursing Home — Provider Information (4pq5-n9py) — Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Monthly. Primary source ↗ · Archive ↗
Used for: Facility identity, ownership, certification, bed counts, star ratings, SFF status. - Nursing Home — Health Deficiencies — Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Monthly (rolling). Primary source ↗ · Archive ↗
Used for: Survey-level deficiency citations: regulatory tag, scope-severity, harm flag, correction status. - Payroll-Based Journal — Daily Nurse Staffing — Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Quarterly. Primary source ↗ · Archive ↗
Used for: RN / LPN / CNA hours per resident-day used in the CMS staffing star rating. - Medicare Care Compare — Nursing Homes — U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), Monthly. Primary source ↗ · Archive ↗
Used for: Consumer-facing source of record for cross-checking any single facility.
Data last updated: 2026-05-25 · Reviewed by Jennifer Montecillo, MD · June 2026. Non-practicing medical reviewer.