About NursingHomeUSA
Why this site exists
In 2022, a US Senate investigation found that major nursing home referral websites — services families trust to help them find care — were receiving up to $15,000 per resident placed from the nursing homes they recommended. This creates an obvious conflict of interest: the "best" nursing home shown to a family isn't necessarily the best nursing home — it's the one that pays the most.
NursingHomeUSA was built to fix that problem. We show only data from the CMS Provider Data Catalog — the same government database that Medicare uses — for all 15,800 Medicare-certified nursing homes in the United States. We do not accept money from nursing homes, we do not sell referrals, and we do not suppress negative data.
What the data includes
- CMS Five-Star Ratings — Overall, health inspection, staffing, and quality measure scores
- Staffing hours — RN hours per resident per day, total nursing hours, and turnover rates
- Inspection citations — Every deficiency tag from recent health inspections, with severity codes
- Abuse alerts — Facilities with active abuse or neglect citations are flagged prominently
- Special Focus Facilities — The CMS list of the worst-performing nursing homes in America
- Civil money penalties — Fines and payment denials issued by CMS
How we update
CMS updates the Provider Data Catalog on the first Wednesday of every month. We import the latest data automatically after each release, so ratings, staffing hours, and citations are never more than 30 days old.
What we don't do
- Accept referral fees or commissions from nursing homes
- Sell "featured" placement that affects search ranking
- Hide abuse citations or Special Focus status
- Require facilities to "claim" a listing in order to appear in results
For nursing home operators
If you operate a listed facility and want to add your website, update contact information, or post a public response to your CMS data, you can do so through our Facility Portal. This does not affect your ranking or rating — those are determined solely by CMS data.