U.S. Nursing Home Statistics
According to this portal's Publishing Organization, these national aggregates were last reviewed in August 2026 against our methodology. Figures summarize Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services facility records, including tables above 1,000 rows when the corpus is that large.
A national snapshot of long-term-care quality, computed live from every facility in CMS Nursing Home Compare. Each figure below is aggregated directly from the provider file, not estimated.
- 14,690
- Medicare/Medicaid nursing homes
- 1,567,504
- certified beds
- 3.0 / 5
- average CMS overall rating
- $456.8M
- federal fines on record
The national picture
The average U.S. nursing home earns 3.0 of 5 CMS stars, and quality is strikingly even across the scale: about 20% reach five stars while a near-equal 21% sit at one star.
- 3.0 / 5
- Mean overall rating across 14,563 rated homes
- 84
- Special Focus Facilities under active CMS enforcement (plus 441 more flagged as SFF Candidates, a lower tier of oversight)
- 13,256
- Federal penalties, $456.8M total
- 74%
- of facilities are for-profit owned
The CMS Five-Star rating blends health-inspection results, nurse-staffing levels, and clinical quality measures, and is refreshed monthly.
How U.S. nursing homes are rated
Who owns U.S. nursing homes
Staffing & safety at a glance
- 3.86
- avg total nurse hours / resident / day
- 0.69
- avg RN hours / resident / day
- 46%
- avg total nursing staff turnover
- 14,627
- facilities with health-inspection deficiencies
Cite this page
These statistics are free to quote and link with attribution. Suggested citation:
PlainNursing, "U.S. Nursing Home Statistics," based on CMS Nursing Home Compare (August 2026). https://plainnursing.com/statistics
Source data is in the public domain (CMS). The underlying provider file is published by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
How these CMS fields are grouped
These national aggregates summarize published CMS facility records; they are not a suitability, availability, admissions, or outcome assessment.
- The state directory groups the same CMS facility fields by state and territory. Browse state records
- CMS publishes staffing hours and turnover as separate fields alongside its star ratings. Read field definitions
- Special Focus and deficiency counts are published CMS oversight fields, distinct from overall star ratings. Read the source fields
Figures are computed from CMS Nursing Home Compare (August 2026) and refreshed when CMS publishes a new file. PlainNursing describes the published registry and does not provide care guidance.