• 57 five star facilities;
• 86 four star facilities;
• 86 three star facilities;
• 68 two star facilities; and
• 119 one star facilities.

CMS created the Five-Star Quality Rating System to help consumers, their families, and caregivers compare nursing homes more easily and to help identify areas about which you may want to ask questions. 

The Nursing Home Compare Web site now features a rating system that will give each nursing home a rating of between 1 and 5 stars.  Nursing homes with 5 stars are considered to have much above average quality and nursing homes with 1 star are considered to have quality much below average (these nursing home still meet Medicare's minimum requirements).  There is one overall 5-star rating for each nursing home, and a separate rating for each of the 3 performance measures (Health Inspections, Staffing, and Quality Measures) that make-up the overall rating. 

Nursing home ratings are taken from the following three sources of data:

• Health Inspections – The health inspection rating contains information from the last 3 years of onsite inspections, including both standard surveys and any complaint surveys.  This information is gathered by individuals who go onsite to the nursing home and follow a specific process to determine the extent to which a nursing home has met Medicare's minimum quality requirements.
• Staffing – The staffing rating includes information about the number of hours of care on average provided to each resident each day by nursing staff.  This rating does consider differences in the level of need of care of residents in different nursing homes.  For example, a nursing home with residents who have more severe needs would be expected to have more nursing staff than a nursing home where the resident needs were not as high.
• Quality Measures – The quality measure rating contains information on 10 different physical and clinical measures for nursing home residents - for example, the percentage of residents with moderate to severe pain and changes to resident's mobility.  This information is collected by the nursing home on all residents and provides information about how well nursing homes are caring for their residents' physical and clinical needs. 

In the Downloads section below, the Five-Star Quality Rating System User's Guide provides in-depth descriptions of the ratings and the methods used to calculate them.

Downloads

General Overview of Five-Star Quality Rating System (PDF, 847KB)  Five-Star Quality Rating System User's Guide (PDF, 564KB)