Choosing a nursing home? Start with the record.

State surveyors inspect Medicare-certified nursing homes, and the findings are public. We translate those records into plain language: what inspectors found, how serious it was, published fines, nurse staffing levels, and who owns the facility. Records may lag current conditions. Verify the facts and visit before deciding.

The nursing-home quality records come from the CMS Provider Data Catalog — the same official records behind Medicare's Care Compare — refreshed monthly (current version: 2026-08-01). We add plain-language translations of the citation codes, but never our own scores.

CMS marks a facility with an abuse icon when inspectors cited it for abuse that caused harm to a resident within the past year, or cited potential for harm in each of the last two years. Ask the facility directly what happened and what changed.

The health inspection rating is graded on a curve within each state: a fixed share of facilities in every state gets each star level. So it shows how a facility compares with its in-state peers, not an absolute grade. The overall rating builds on that inspection score and then adjusts for staffing and quality measures from resident assessments and claims — always read the ratings together with the actual inspection findings.

Inspectors assign each citation a letter from A to L. G through I means residents were actually harmed; J through L ("immediate jeopardy") means a situation put residents in immediate danger of serious injury or death. D through F means potential for harm.

Staffing hours come from payroll records facilities must submit (not self-estimates), and we show them case-mix adjusted — CMS’s method for fair comparison when residents need different amounts of care — next to state and national averages.