U.S. Nursing Home Statistics
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.
- 14,703
- Medicare/Medicaid nursing homes
- 1,570,047
- certified beds
- 3.0 / 5
- average CMS overall rating
- $480.1M
- 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 20% sit at one star.
- 3.0 / 5
- Mean overall rating across 14,572 rated homes
- 528
- Special Focus facilities (persistent problems)
- 14,835
- Federal penalties, $480.1M 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
- 3.89
- avg total nurse hours / resident / day
- 0.68
- avg RN hours / resident / day
- 46%
- avg total nursing staff turnover
- 14,642
- 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 (March 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.
Reading these numbers
National averages set context; an individual facility can sit anywhere on the scale.
- A near-even rating spread means a five-star home and a one-star home can be in the same town, so compare locally. Browse by state
- Staffing hours and turnover often explain rating gaps better than the overall star alone. Staffing guide
- Special Focus and deficiency history flag persistent problems a single star cannot show. Deficiencies explained
Figures are computed from CMS Nursing Home Compare (March 2026) and refreshed when CMS publishes a new file. CMS Five-Star ratings measure relative performance bands, not absolute clinical safety.