Senior Care Report Card is an independent, family-first directory of every Medicare-certified nursing home in the United States. We translate the federal CMS Care Compare dataset — inspections, staffing, enforcement actions, complaints — into plain-English safety reports you can read in three minutes. We accept no placement referral fees and no facility can pay to change its score.
What this site is
Senior Care Report Card is a publishing layer on top of the federal CMS Care Compare database. For every nursing home we cover, we publish:
- A 0–100 Senior Care Safety Score built from the same data CMS uses to regulate the industry — see a sample report.
- Plain-English explanations of every health deficiency cited at the most recent inspection, including F-tag, scope/severity, and what the citation actually means for residents.
- Staffing levels (RN hours and total nurse hours per resident day) compared to state and national averages.
- Enforcement history — fines, civil money penalties, payment denials, Special Focus Facility status, and repeat citations across consecutive inspections.
We also publish independent Senior Care Report Card Insights articles that analyze trends in the underlying federal data each month, plus a Resources Hub with practical guides for families.
Why we built it
Most families have three to seven days to choose a nursing home. That decision is usually made under financial pressure, emotional exhaustion, and often from a hospital waiting room. The public data that could help — inspection reports, deficiency citations, staffing records, enforcement actions — exists, but it is scattered across government databases, written in regulatory language, and difficult to interpret without expertise.
The result is that families routinely choose facilities based on location, bed availability, and brochures alone. Some of those facilities have serious recent safety records that any family would want to know about. We think that is wrong, and fixable. See how Senior Care Report Card works →
How our scores work
Every facility receives a Senior Care Safety Score — a 0–100 weighted score built from five components drawn from public CMS data:
| Pillar | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Staffing | 25% | RN and total nurse hours per resident day vs. national benchmarks (with CMS staffing rating fallback) |
| Inspection history | 22% | CMS health inspection star rating, adjusted for serious recent deficiencies |
| Penalties & enforcement | 20% | Civil money penalties, payment denials, and severity of recent enforcement actions |
| Complaint history | 18% | Substantiated complaint deficiencies recorded in the federal record |
| Quality outcomes | 15% | Resident outcome measures from CMS MDS & claims data (falls, pressure ulcers, weight loss, hospitalizations, etc.) |
Hard safety overrides: when a facility has a recent Immediate Jeopardy finding, an active abuse citation, or Special Focus Facility status, a hard cap is applied to the maximum possible score — regardless of how the other metrics look. A facility cannot score its way out of a serious recent safety event.
A full explanation is on our How It Works page.
What our scores do not measure
We are explicit about the limits of this data because honesty is more useful than false confidence. Our scores reflect what federal inspectors documented during official visits. They do not capture the quality of daily life and resident dignity, family satisfaction, culture of care, end-of-life care quality, how management responds to concerns, or how a facility feels during an unannounced evening visit.
Inspection data has known limitations — surveyor variability between states, underreporting of incidents, and the gap between what inspectors see on a scheduled visit and what happens every other day. A facility with a strong score may still not be the right fit for your loved one; a facility with a lower score may have improved significantly since its last inspection. Our reports are a starting point for research — not a substitute for visiting in person, talking to current residents and families, and asking hard questions. The free 12-point safety checklist is built for exactly that conversation.
Independence & how we make money
Senior Care Report Card is an independent publication. We do not accept placement referral fees, sponsored listings, or any payments from care facilities. We have no financial relationship with any facility listed on this site, and we do not earn anything when a family chooses a particular home.
Our revenue comes from third-party display advertising on informational pages such as guides and how-to articles. Ads on this site are served by Google AdSense; we do not control the specific ads shown but actively block ad categories related to nursing home chains, senior care placement services, and care facilities. Ads are never displayed on individual facility report pages. If you ever see an ad from a facility or placement agency on a facility report page, please contact us immediately at hello@seniorcarereportcard.com.
For full disclosure, see our Affiliate Disclosure.
What we are — and what we are not
Senior Care Report Card is an interpretation and presentation layer over publicly available government data. We do not conduct facility inspections; we summarize, translate, and contextualize data that already exists in federal databases.
We are not a placement agency. We are not providing medical or legal advice. Care decisions involve complex medical, financial, and personal factors. Always consult qualified medical professionals, elder law attorneys, and licensed care advisors before making placement decisions. See our Disclaimer for the complete statement.
Editorial standards & corrections
Senior Care Report Card pages and articles are written and edited by the Senior Care Report Card editorial team. We base factual claims on public CMS Care Compare, inspection, staffing, enforcement, ownership, and quality-measure data, and we link readers back to official sources whenever possible.
We review methodology and source-data language when CMS changes its public datasets or scoring inputs. When we make a display, interpretation, or calculation error, we correct it and document material methodology changes on the methodology page. Facility operators and families can request a review through our contact page; we respond to score-display concerns within 5 business days.
Frequently asked questions
Where does your data come from?
Every data point comes from public CMS sources — Care Compare for inspections, staffing, and quality measures; CMS enforcement files for fines and Special Focus Facility status; and CMS ownership disclosure records. We refresh from CMS each month and link back to the source so you can verify any number yourself.
How is your score different from the CMS five-star rating?
CMS publishes five separate ratings (overall, health inspection, staffing, quality, long-stay) with no single summary. We combine the underlying data into one 0–100 score, weight each component transparently, and apply hard safety overrides for Immediate Jeopardy, abuse citations, and Special Focus Facility status. See the full methodology.
Do facilities pay to be listed or to change their score?
No. Listing is automatic for any Medicare-certified nursing home in the federal CMS database. No facility can pay to be listed, removed, re-ranked, or to hide negative inspection data. We earn no referral fees.
How often is the data updated?
We sync with CMS monthly. Each facility report shows the exact date the underlying federal data was collected.
I'm a facility operator and my CMS data is wrong — can you fix it?
We cannot alter government records. Work directly with your state survey agency or CMS to correct the underlying data. Once CMS publishes the correction, our scores update automatically on the next monthly refresh.
How do I contact you?
For questions about a report, data concerns, corrections, or press inquiries, email hello@seniorcarereportcard.com or use the contact page.