Methodology
Rate a Nursing Home publishes CMS star ratings, health inspection citations, Payroll-Based Journal staffing hours, and penalties for Medicare- and Medicaid-certified nursing homes. The site copies those fields. It does not assign a score of its own.
Who publishes the site
The pages are published by Rate a Nursing Home. The site is an independent presentation of public files. It is not the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Medicare, Medicaid, or a state survey agency, and it is not endorsed by them. Correspondence about a page goes to hello@rateanursinghome.com.
Files the pages copy
CMS processed this release on September 1, 2026, modified the files on September 30, 2026, and released them on October 8, 2026. The catalog page is the CMS Provider Data Catalog for nursing homes. Pages on this site use these files from that release:
- Provider Information (4pq5-n9py)
- Health Deficiencies (r5ix-sfxw)
- Penalties (g6vv-u9sr)
- State US Averages (xcdc-v8bm)
Provider Information supplies the name, address, star ratings, staffing hours, and penalty totals. Health Deficiencies supplies the citation rows. Penalties supplies individual fine and payment-denial rows. State US Averages supplies the state and national comparison figures. When CMS published state health-inspection cut points for this release, the state page prints those ranges. A field CMS left blank is left blank here.
How a star rating is shown
The overall, health inspection, staffing, and quality-measure stars are the values in the Provider Information file. The method is the September 2026 Technical Users' Guide. The overall rating starts from the health inspection rating. A five-star staffing or quality-measure rating can add one star, and a one-star rating on either can subtract one. Health inspection stars are assigned inside each state. Staffing and quality-measure stars use national thresholds. How to read star ratings follows that guide. A star rating is not a recommendation, and a list sorted by stars is a way to scan the file, not an official CMS ranking.
How often the figures change
These pages show the CMS release processed on September 1, 2026. A later Provider Data Catalog release replaces the figures when the site is built from the new files. Until that build, the processing date printed on a page is the file the numbers were copied from. The site does not keep a second set of ratings between those builds.
Editorial independence
Advertising, including Google AdSense, can appear on the pages. An ad does not change a star rating, a citation, a staffing hour, or a penalty amount. Those figures stay the values in the CMS file for the processing date on the page. The arrangement of the pages and the guide text are published by this site. The underlying provider facts are CMS records.
Corrections
Write when a page does not match the CMS file for the processing date printed on that page. Send the message to hello@rateanursinghome.com. Include the page address, the six-character CMS certification number, the field, and the value in the CMS file. The contact page is the same mailbox.
The report is checked against the Provider Data Catalog file for that processing date. If the page mis-copied the field, the corrected copy is published in the next build of the site from the CMS files. There is no separate corrections calendar. If the page already matches the file, the figure stays, because this site does not change a CMS value. A family's account of a visit is not substituted for the file.
A complaint about a resident's care, or a dispute of a citation itself, is not a copy correction. Care complaints go to the facility, the Long-Term Care Ombudsman, or the state survey agency. Citations that are in informal dispute resolution or independent informal dispute resolution can remain on the page while CMS keeps them out of the star calculation, which the star-rating guide describes.