What public data exists on nursing homes?

Seven CMS datasets: Provider Information (Care Compare), health inspection deficiencies, Payroll-Based Journal staffing, MDS quality measures, Medicare cost reports, PECOS ownership records, and Medicare Advantage enrollment. All are free to download from data.cms.gov.

Does CMS publish what insurers pay nursing homes?

No. No CMS nursing home dataset carries a payer-negotiated rate. Cost reports show revenue and days by payer, which implies an average. The negotiated rate itself appears only in insurer price-transparency files.

What is the join key across nursing home datasets?

The CCN (CMS Certification Number), a six-character facility code. It is the one identifier that appears in all seven datasets.

Guide

Nursing Home Data: What Exists and Where It Comes From

Nearly everything publicly known about a U.S. nursing home comes from seven CMS datasets. They are free, they cover every Medicare-certified facility in the country, and each one answers a different question. Nursing home data, skilled nursing data and SNF data all mean these same files — CMS says SNF for payment and nursing home for quality — and every one of them keys on the facility’s CCN.

The seven sources

Dataset	What it answers	Updates	Back to
Provider Information · Care Compare Ratings, ownership, beds, census, staffing hours, survey summary	How does this facility rate, and is it moving?	Monthly	2017
Health Deficiencies · F-tags Every citation: F-tag, scope, severity, survey date	What went wrong at the last survey?	Monthly	2017
Payroll-Based Journal · PBJ Payroll-verified nurse and aide hours by day and job code	How is it actually staffed?	Quarterly	2017
MDS · Minimum Data Set Two files: 18 scored quality measures, and item-level response frequencies	How is clinical performance trending?	Quarterly	Rolling 4 qtrs
Medicare Cost Reports · Form CMS-2540 Expenses, revenue, days by payer, balance sheet, wages	Is it making money?	Annual	1990s
Ownership · PECOS Entities and individuals behind each enrollment, plus CHOW filings	Who is behind it?	Quarterly	Current + history
Medicare Advantage · MA penetration Enrollment and penetration by county, plan, and contract	How fast is MA growing here?	Monthly	2008

All seven are free to download from data.cms.gov, no account required.

Where to start

Looking at one facility: Start with Provider Information for the ratings and the shape of the building, then read the deficiency file for what actually happened at the last survey.
Looking at a market: Provider Information gives you every facility in a county and how they rate against each other. Medicare Advantage enrollment shows how the payer mix is moving underneath them.
Looking at an operator: The ownership files link a facility to the entities behind it, and change-of-ownership filings show what has traded and when.
Looking at the money: Cost reports are the annual financial statement — expenses, revenue and days by payer, for essentially every facility in the country.

Going deeper

All seven, already joined

SNF Insights puts all seven on one facility record, alongside commercial payer rates, so a question spanning two of them takes a minute rather than a project.

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Coverage reflects our copy of each dataset as of August 2026 and drifts as CMS publishes. SNF Insights is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by CMS.