CMS calls Form CMS-2567 the official documentation used to record nursing home deficiencies. The form instructions describe it as a listing of deficiencies the surveying state agency, an accrediting organization, or a CMS regional office has cited as requiring correction. The summary statement is based on the surveyors' professional knowledge and their interpretation of the Medicare or Medicaid requirements. Exhibit 7A of the State Operations Manual, the principles of documentation, says the same thing in surveyor language: the form is the official document that communicates whether the home was in compliance, and it is also the form the home uses to submit a plan to get back into compliance. It is an official record, and it is available to the public on request.
A report with no citations is still a report. When surveyors find a nursing home in compliance, Exhibit 7A says the form should say so in plain words: that the home is in compliance with 42 CFR Part 483, the requirements for long-term care facilities. A stack of tags is not the only result a survey can have.
Where the report is, and what this site shows instead
Residents have a right to examine the results of the most recent survey by federal or state surveyors, and any plan of correction in effect. The facility has to post the most recent survey results where residents, family members, and legal representatives can get to them. It also has to keep reports of surveys, certifications, and complaint investigations from the three preceding years, and any plan of correction in effect, and make those available to any individual who asks. A notice that the reports exist has to be posted where the public can see it. The facility is not allowed to make identifying information about complainants or residents available. Those duties are 42 CFR 483.10(g)(10) and (g)(11). Tag F577 is the survey code this file uses for that requirement.
You do not have to be in the building to ask. 42 CFR 488.325 requires the state or CMS to make statements of deficiencies, the provider's comments, approved plans of correction, and a separate list of isolated deficiencies that caused no actual harm, with only a potential for minimal harm, available to the public on request. The disclosing agency has to release that material within 14 calendar days after each item is made available to the facility. CMS and the state may charge for specified services under the disclosure rules the section names. The State Operations Manual tells survey agencies, when they write back to a complainant, to say where the statement of deficiencies and plan of correction can be found: posted at the nursing home, on Nursing Home Care Compare, or by requesting Form CMS-2567 from the state survey agency.
The pages on this site are a different cut of the same federal survey system. The Health Deficiencies file in the Provider Data Catalog stores one row per citation: the certification number, the survey date, the tag, a short description, the scope and severity letter, the correction status, and the survey type. It does not store the surveyor's narrative or the home's plan of correction. Open a home from the state and city lists, or from search, and you can see which tags were cited and how CMS graded them. To read what the surveyor wrote about a particular resident, a particular shift, or a particular record, you still need the Form CMS-2567. The deficiency-tag guide explains the rows. This page explains the document those rows are taken from.
The left side is the surveyor's finding
The form instructions tell the surveying agency to put a prefix identification tag in the column labeled ID prefix tag. For a health requirement in a nursing home, that tag is an F-tag, the code Appendix PP of the State Operations Manual uses for a section of 42 CFR Part 483. Under the tag, for a skilled nursing facility or nursing facility, Exhibit 7A says the scope and severity decision is documented in the left column. The letter, from A through L, is a separate fact from the tag number. The glossary defines the tags that appear in the current file. The deficiency-tag guide explains what the letters mean for harm and how widely the problem was found.
Exhibit 7A tells surveyors that a complete citation has three parts. The regulatory reference is the tag number, the CFR citation, the language of the requirement the home did not meet, and an explicit statement that the requirement was not met. The software that produces the form generates those pieces. Then comes the statement of deficient practice, and then the relevant facts.
The statement of deficient practice is supposed to name the specific action, error, or failure to act; the outcome of that practice when the surveyors can identify one; how widespread it was, or how many cases were deficient compared with how many were reviewed; an identifier for the people or situations; and the source of the evidence. The facts are supposed to answer who, what, where, when, and how. Evidence can come from observation, interview, or review of records. The citation is supposed to be written in plain language, in the active voice, without advice to the home mixed into the finding. Exhibit 7A says those principles are guidance for surveyors. They do not create extra obligations. They are still a useful checklist for a reader, because a citation that skips the extent, the date, or the source is harder to understand and harder for the home to answer.
Read the narrative before you treat the tag as the whole event. Two homes can share an F-tag and a letter and still have different facts underneath. One F689 citation might describe an unwitnessed fall and a care plan that never mentioned the risk. Another might describe a missing resident and a door alarm that staff had bypassed. The tag says which rule was cited. The paragraph says what the surveyors say they saw, were told, or read. The guide to choosing a home is about how to take those facts on a visit. This page is about finding them in the report.
An isolated finding with the potential for no more than minimal harm, and no actual harm, is often pulled out of the main list. Exhibit 7A says a scope-and-severity A finding is documented on a separate statement titled for isolated deficiencies that cause no harm with only a potential for minimal harm. Section 488.325 requires that list to be public as well. Do not assume a short main form means the survey found nothing at that lowest level. Ask whether the separate list exists for that survey date.
If the home fixed the problem while surveyors were still in the building, the citation does not come off the form for that reason. Exhibit 7A says a determination of "not met" is still documented. The home may describe the correction in the right-hand column. A problem that was repaired on the last day of the survey can still be a public deficiency. The column on the right is where the home says what it did.
The right side is the home's plan, not the finding
42 CFR 488.401 defines a plan of correction as a plan developed by the facility and approved by CMS or the survey agency that describes the actions the facility will take to correct deficiencies and specifies the date by which those deficiencies will be corrected. The form instructions say the statements in that column should reflect the facility's plan for corrective action and the anticipated time of correction, and that an explicit date must be shown. If the work is already done when the form comes back, the plan should give the date it was completed. The signed original has to be returned to the surveying agency within 10 days of receipt. CMS's enforcement overview describes that same window as 10 calendar days.
CMS's nursing home enforcement questions list what an acceptable plan has to cover. It has to say how corrective action will be accomplished for the residents who were affected. It has to say how the home will identify other residents who could be affected by the same practice. It has to say what measures or systemic changes will keep the practice from happening again. It has to say how the home will monitor whether the solution lasts. And it has to include dates when the corrective action will be completed. Those dates have to be acceptable to the state. If the plan is not acceptable, the state notifies the home in writing. If it is acceptable, the state may notify the home by phone or email. CMS cautions homes that they remain accountable for compliance even when that notice is slow. The plan of correction is the home's allegation of compliance. It is not, by itself, a surveyor's finding that the problem is gone.
42 CFR 488.402(d) requires a plan of correction for deficiencies with program requirements, with one exception. A facility does not have to submit a plan when the deficiencies are isolated and have a potential for minimal harm, but no actual harm has occurred. A completion date printed next to a more serious tag is the date the home proposed or claimed. A later revisit is how surveyors check whether the home is back in substantial compliance. Revisit points, when noncompliance continues, are part of the health inspection score. The star-rating guide explains those points. A fine is a separate enforcement action, explained in the guide to fines and payment denials. A directed plan of correction, which is a remedy CMS or the state imposes, is not the same document as the plan the home writes in the right-hand column.
Disagreeing with the citation
42 CFR 488.331 requires the state, for a non-federal survey, to offer the facility an informal chance to dispute survey findings after the facility receives the official statement of deficiencies. CMS offers the same kind of opportunity for a federal survey. For certain civil money penalties, there is also an independent informal dispute resolution path, with its own deadline. Failure to finish the dispute on time cannot delay the effective date of an enforcement action, and the facility cannot use an unfinished dispute as a reason to delay one. If the facility later shows that a deficiency should not have been cited, the deficiency is removed from the statement of deficiencies, and enforcement actions imposed solely because of that citation are rescinded.
While a citation is still in informal dispute resolution or independent informal dispute resolution, it can remain on the public record. The September 2026 Technical Users' Guide keeps those citations out of the health inspection star until the dispute ends. The facility page on this site marks a row that is under dispute. The public form and the star rating are answering different questions. One says what was cited. The other says whether that citation is currently inside the star math.
A way to read one report
Start with the facility name, the survey date, and whether the form says the home was in compliance or lists tags. For each tag, write down the number, the scope and severity letter, and one sentence about what the narrative says happened: who was involved, using whatever identifier the report uses, what staff did or failed to do, and the date of the event rather than only the date of the survey. Then read the plan of correction beside that tag and write down the completion date and the monitoring step, if one is there.
Take that page to the director of nursing. A precise question is easier to answer than a request for reassurance. Ask what changed for the residents the narrative describes, how the home looked for other residents with the same risk, and what a visitor would see now that is different. If the letter is J, K, or L, ask whether anyone was seriously harmed and whether the immediate-jeopardy finding has been lifted. If the same tag appears on an older report from the three-year set, ask what failed in the system the plan of correction was supposed to change.
Compare can put the health-deficiency counts of up to four homes next to each other. The count is not a substitute for the narrative. Two homes with the same number of citations can have very different statements of deficiencies. When you are choosing, read the report for the survey dates you care about, then use the facility page to see how those citations sit next to staffing hours and penalties from the same CMS release.
State licensure findings are a separate record. Exhibit 7A says a failure to follow state or local law is not written on Form CMS-2567 except when the federal regulation itself requires compliance with that state or local law. A clean federal form is not a statement that the state licensing agency found nothing. Ask the state survey agency if you need the licensure file. Contact information for those agencies is on the CMS survey-agency list. How to file a complaint that can lead to a later report is covered in the complaint guide.
Sources
- Form CMS-2567, Statement of Deficiencies and Plan of Correction, instructions for the tag column, the summary statement, the plan of correction, and the 10-day return.
- State Operations Manual, Exhibit 7A, Principles of Documentation.
- CMS nursing home enforcement questions, on Form CMS-2567 and what an acceptable plan of correction contains.
- CMS Quality, Safety and Oversight enforcement overview, describing the 10-calendar-day response.
- 42 CFR 483.10(g)(10) and (g)(11), posting and availability of survey results.
- 42 CFR 488.325, public disclosure, and 42 CFR 488.331, informal dispute resolution.
- 42 CFR 488.401 and 42 CFR 488.402, the plan of correction.
- State Operations Manual, Chapter 5, section 5080.1, where a complainant is told to look for the statement of deficiencies.
- Medicare Care Compare and the Health Deficiencies dataset, processing date September 1, 2026.