The record behind the record
Where our data comes from
Every fact on a CareWitness facility page comes from federal CMS records — one certification system covering every Medicare/Medicaid-certified nursing home in the country. Each piece of information is labeled with its source and date so you can see exactly where it came from.
Our method is deliberately plain: data comes unaltered from the federal files. We join the CMS releases on each facility's CCN, display ratings, inspections, penalties, and ownership exactly as published, and stamp every fact with its source and the date of the release it came from. When a record is silent, we say so rather than fill the gap.
Source of record — every certified nursing home in the United States
CMS Care Compare — Provider Information
Every facility on CareWitness starts here. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services publishes a national file of every nursing home certified to participate in Medicare or Medicaid — identity, location, capacity, ownership type, and quality ratings. If a facility isn't in this file, it doesn't appear on CareWitness.
What we pull from it
- —Facility name, address, city, county, zip, lat/lng
- —CMS Certification Number (CCN)
- —Certified beds and average residents per day
- —Legal business name and ownership type
- —Overall, health inspection, staffing, and quality-measure star ratings
- —Reported nursing hours per resident per day
- —Nursing staff, RN, and administrator turnover
- —Fines, payment denials, and total dollar penalties
- —Abuse icon flag and Special Focus Facility status
- —Inspection cycle dates and deficiency counts
Update cadence
Monthly, following each CMS Care Compare release.
Important context
Every field carries the processing date of the CMS file it came from. When you see "processing date July 2026" on a listing, that's the date stamped on the federal release. Data is displayed exactly as CMS publishes it — no adjustment, no normalization, no editorializing.
Depth layer — the federal paper trail behind each facility
CMS inspection, penalty, ownership, and chain records
CMS also publishes the underlying records behind the ratings: per-citation health and fire-safety inspection results, per-event fines and payment denials, provider-enrollment ownership filings (every disclosed owner, with private-equity and REIT indicators), changes of ownership, and chain-wide performance measures. We join all of them to each facility via its CCN.
What we pull from it
- —Health-deficiency citations with scope/severity codes
- —Fire-safety (Life Safety Code) citations
- —Individual fines and payment-denial events, by year
- —Disclosed owners, roles, and ownership percentages
- —Private-equity, REIT, and holding-company indicators
- —Recent changes of ownership (buyer, seller, date)
- —Chain affiliation and chain-wide quality rollups
Update cadence
On CMS's release cadence for each file; every section shows its own snapshot date.
Important context
These are the records CMS uses for federal oversight. Chain pages aggregate them so a facility can be read against its operator's national track record.
What CareWitness stands behind
CMS data shown unaltered
Abuse flags, fines, and Special Focus designations appear prominently on every facility page, in the form CMS publishes them.
Every listing is real
Every facility on CareWitness is a real, federally certified nursing home in the CMS record. No fabricated listings, no invented reviews.
Every fact is sourced and dated
Every field on a facility page carries the source that fed it and the date it was last verified.