The Care Ratings is a free Care Discovery and Data Intelligence Platform that helps families compare providers through clear profiles, maps and local nursing home rankings.
Press kit2026
On the record.
Facts, approved descriptions, research you can cite, logos and a direct line to our team. Everything on this page is free to use in coverage of The Care Ratings.
- Medicare- and Medicaid-certified providers profiled
- 43,000+
- members in our ratings and reviews community
- 33,000+
- states, D.C. and U.S. territories covered
- 56
- original studies published with open data
- 3
Provider counts as of September 27, 2026, from CMS provider files. Member count as of September 2026.
01At a glance
The short version
The facts reporters ask for first, in one place.
- Name
- The Care Ratings
- What we are
- A free Care Discovery and Data Intelligence PlatformShort form: a Care Discovery Platform
- Use case
- Families compare providers through clear profiles, maps and local nursing home rankings. A family planning a parent's discharge can use it to build a shortlist before calling and visiting facilities.
- Coverage
- 43,167 Medicare- and Medicaid-certified providers in all 50 states, Washington, D.C. and five U.S. territories: 14,733 nursing homes, 12,646 home health agencies, 7,076 hospices, 7,490 dialysis facilities and 1,222 inpatient rehabilitation facilities.Counts as of September 27, 2026.
- Community
- A growing community of more than 33,000 members rates and reviews the providers it knows, adding first-hand experience alongside the federal record. Community ratings appear separately from CMS star ratings.Member count as of September 2026.
- Core data
- CMS Care Compare and the CMS Provider Data Catalog: star ratings, inspections, staffing, penalties and ownership filings.
- Community data
- Census Bureau, CDC and HUD figures for the ZIP code and city around each provider.
- Open data
- A monthly nursing home dataset, free to downloadCMS values are public domain; our derived data is CC BY 4.0. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22780104
- Independence
- Not affiliated with CMS, any government agency, care provider, chain or insurer. No facility can pay to alter its government-sourced data.
- Operated by
- Watch Digital LLC, Atlanta, Georgia
- Website
- thecareratings.com
- Press contact
- press@thecareratings.com
02About us
How to describe us
Three approved descriptions. Use one as written or adapt it; the figures in them are current as of September 27, 2026.
The Care Ratings is a free Care Discovery and Data Intelligence Platform that helps families compare providers through clear profiles, maps and local nursing home rankings. A family planning a parent's discharge can use it to build a shortlist before calling and visiting facilities. Its profiles pair federal data on more than 43,000 certified providers with ratings and reviews from a growing community of more than 33,000 members, and no facility can pay to change either.
The Care Ratings is a free Care Discovery and Data Intelligence Platform that helps families compare providers through clear profiles, maps and local nursing home rankings. A family planning a parent's discharge can use it to build a shortlist before calling and visiting facilities. The platform profiles more than 43,000 Medicare- and Medicaid-certified nursing homes, home health agencies, hospices, dialysis facilities and inpatient rehabilitation facilities, pairing federal quality, inspection, staffing and penalty records with ratings and reviews from a growing community of more than 33,000 members. The Care Ratings also publishes original research and an open monthly dataset of U.S. nursing homes with a registered DOI. No facility can pay to alter its government data or its reviews. The Care Ratings is operated by Watch Digital LLC and based in Atlanta, Georgia. Learn more at thecareratings.com.
Our name
How to write it, and a few ways not to.
Write
- The Care RatingsThree words with a capital T, including mid-sentence: “according to The Care Ratings.”
- thecareratings.comAll lowercase, when you mean the website.
- a Care Discovery PlatformOur short descriptor. With room: “a Care Discovery and Data Intelligence Platform.”
Avoid
- Care Ratings“The” is part of the name.
- TheCareRatingsOne word only in the web address.
- TCRPlease do not abbreviate the name.
- a care directoryOr “listing site.” We are a Care Discovery Platform.
03Research
Research built to be checked
Each study is pinned to a data release, published with its code and tables, and comes with a reporter's guide that shows which numbers you can quote and how to phrase them.
Who owns America's nursing homes, as disclosed to CMS
Ownership study, first edition · release v2026.08
What every certified nursing home discloses to CMS about its owners, including private-equity and REIT flags, chains and changes of ownership, with a register of the places where the federal files disagree.
65 of 14,690 certified nursing homes (0.44%) disclose a private-equity owner to CMS.
Where the fines fall: federal penalties against U.S. nursing homes
Enforcement brief, first edition · release v2026.08
Every federal fine and payment denial in the CMS penalties file: how much, how concentrated, who and where, with each year since 2019 counted at the same age.
The most-fined 5% of facilities account for 44.5% of fine dollars.
The floor that never took effect: nursing home staffing against the repealed federal minimums
Staffing brief, first edition · release v2026.08
How many nursing homes report staffing at or above the federal minimums that were repealed before they took effect, set beside what each state requires.
21.8% of nursing homes report hours at or above all three repealed federal floors.
Dataset · updated monthly
Open Nursing Home Data
A facility-level dataset of every certified U.S. nursing home, rebuilt from CMS files each month and published with checksums, a codebook and a DOI. Free to download, free to reuse with credit.
Trackers and tools
- Chain profiles
Every nursing home chain CMS identifies, with its facilities, ownership disclosures, penalties and changes of ownership.
- Ownership discrepancy register
Where the federal ownership files disagree, facility by facility, with a CSV download.
- State ownership laws
What states have enacted or advanced since 2025 on health care ownership disclosure, citing each legislature.
- State staffing standards
The minimum staffing each state sets for nursing homes, from the legal text.
- Nursing Home Quality Index
Our state-by-state composite of CMS ratings, penalties and staffing. It is ours, not a CMS measure.
- Methodology
Every data source we use, how often it updates and how it feeds the site.
04How to cite
Cite the source that made the number
CMS figures belong to CMS. Figures we calculate belong to us. Here is how to tell them apart and credit each one.
CMS figure, or ours?
Star ratings, fines, staffing hours and ownership filings are CMS figures: cite CMS. Shares, rankings, comparisons and the Care Quality Index are our calculations: cite The Care Ratings.
Name the release
Our research is pinned to a data release, such as v2026.08. Naming it lets anyone recompute your figure from the same files.
Link the page
Link the report or data page the figure came from so readers can check it. Every one lists its sources.
Credit lines
- A figure we calculatedSource: The Care Ratings analysis of CMS data (release v2026.08)
- A CMS figure shown on our siteSource: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, via The Care Ratings
- A chart or mapChart: The Care Ratings. Data: CMS.
- A community rating from our membersSource: The Care Ratings member reviews
Full citation, ownership study
The Care Ratings Team (2026). Who owns America's nursing homes, as disclosed to CMS: Ownership study, first edition (version 1.0, release v2026.08). The Care Ratings. https://thecareratings.com/data/ownership/report-2026/ Data: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22780105
More formats, including BibTeX, on the citation page.
What you can reuse
| Material | Terms |
|---|---|
| Values from CMS files: star ratings, fines, staffing hours, ownership filings | Public domain. Credit CMS as the source. |
| Our research: reports, their charts and tables, and our derived data | CC BY 4.0. Reuse freely with credit to The Care Ratings. |
| The logos and brand assets on this page | Use in editorial coverage of The Care Ratings. Ask us first for anything else. |
| Everything else on thecareratings.com | Quote and link as you would any publication. Ask us before republishing it. |
05Logos
Logo files
PNG files with transparent backgrounds, cut from our master artwork. Choose the version made for your background, or download everything at once.
Full-color logo
For white and light backgrounds. Use this one unless you have a reason not to.
Download Full-color logo
Everything in one file
The press kit
All five logo files, plus a README with our name rules, brand colors, usage rules and contacts.
Download the kit06Brand guidelines
Using our brand
A few rules keep the logo legible and recognizable wherever it appears: in print, on screen, over a photo or beside a partner's logo.
Give it room
Keep clear space on every side at least as tall as the lowercase e in the wordmark: about a fifth of the logo's height. Text, other logos and the edge of the frame stay outside it.
x = height of the lowercase e
Keep it legible
Full logo: at least 150 px wide on screen or 30 mm (1.2 in) in print. Shield: at least 24 px or 8 mm tall. In anything smaller, write our name in text instead.
Pick the version for the background
Full color on white and light backgrounds; white on navy, dark colors and dark photos. Avoid bright brand colors and busy images, where neither version stands out.
Do:WhiteFull-color logo
Do:Mist and light graysFull-color logo
Do:Navy and dark colorsWhite logo
Do:Dark, calm photosWhite logo, over an even dark area
Avoid:Sky, teal and bright colorsNeither version stands out
Avoid:Busy photosPut the logo on a solid panel instead
Please don't
Use the supplied files exactly as they are. Each of these makes the logo harder to recognize.
Don't:Stretch or squash it
Don't:Rotate it
Don't:Change its colors
Don't:Add shadows or glows
Don't:Box it in or outline it
Don't:Put the full-color logo on a dark background
Don't:Use the wordmark without the shield
Don't:Rearrange or stack the parts
- The Care Ratings
Don't:Retype the name in another font
Beside other logos
Match the other logo's visual size, align the two on a shared center line and separate them with clear space or a thin vertical rule. Please don't merge our logo into a combined mark.
Color
Navy leads, white gives it room, and sky and teal carry data and quality signals. Use these values exactly.
- PrimaryNavyHEX
#0F2D4ARGB15, 45, 74Headlines, text and dark backgrounds. The logo outline and wordmark.
- AccentSkyHEX
#0EA5E9RGB14, 165, 233Data, highlights and icons. On navy it works for text; on white, for graphics only.
- QualityTealHEX
#0D9488RGB13, 148, 136Positive signals and quality indicators. Large text only on white.
- BackgroundMistHEX
#F8FAFCRGB248, 250, 252Page and panel backgrounds.
- Secondary textSlateHEX
#64748BRGB100, 116, 139Captions, labels and supporting text.
Balance: mostly navy and white, with sky and teal as accents
Contrast pairings
Contrast ratios from the WCAG 2.2 formula. Body text needs 4.5:1; large text and graphics need 3:1.
| Sample | Pairing | Contrast | Use for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Navy on white | 14.1:1 | AAA Any text | |
| White on navy | 14.1:1 | AAA Any text | |
| Sky on navy | 5.1:1 | AA Body text | |
| Slate on white | 4.8:1 | AA Body text | |
| Teal on white | 3.7:1 | AA large Large text and graphics only | |
| Sky on white | 2.8:1 | Fail Decoration only, never text |
Typeface
Our site and materials are set in Outfit, a free typeface from Google Fonts released under the SIL Open Font License. Use it when you design something with us, never to recreate our wordmark.
- Regular400
- Medium500
- SemiBold600
- Bold700
07FAQ
Questions reporters ask
Straight answers about our data, our business and our independence. If yours is not here, ask us.
Is The Care Ratings affiliated with CMS or the government?
No. The Care Ratings is independent and operated by Watch Digital LLC, a Georgia company. We are not affiliated with or endorsed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Department of Health and Human Services or any other government agency, and we are not affiliated with any care provider, chain or insurer.
Where does your data come from, and how current is it?
Provider data comes from CMS, through the Provider Data Catalog that also feeds Medicare's Care Compare. We check CMS every day for new nursing home data and load each release when it is published; our data team loads the other provider types from CMS files. Community data comes from the Census Bureau, the CDC and HUD. Our methodology lists every source and its update schedule.
Can facilities pay to change their ratings, data or reviews?
No. No facility can pay to change, hide or improve its government-sourced data: star ratings, inspections, staffing and penalties appear the same for every facility, paid or not. Nor can a facility pay to remove, edit or promote a member review. Facilities can buy a Verified listing, which adds photos and details, lets them reply to reviews and carries a badge. Today, no list or search result on the site is ordered by payment. Our research program takes no facility, chain, investor or trade-association funding.
Where do community ratings come from, and how are they kept honest?
From our growing community of more than 33,000 members. Members rate and review the providers they know; reviewing takes a signed-in member account, each member can review a provider once, and facility owner accounts cannot post reviews. Every review is checked before it appears, and a review flagged by three members goes back to moderation. Facilities can reply, and replies are labeled as theirs. Community ratings appear separately from CMS star ratings and never change them.
How does The Care Ratings make money?
Three ways, each labeled. Facility owners can pay for a Verified listing to build out and update their full profile. Facilities can pay to be shown at the top of their state and city pages, marked as sponsored, which never changes their ratings. And facilities in our referral program pay for leads: introductions to families who ask to be connected. Payment never changes government data, star ratings or member reviews, and our planned AI Care Advisor will not rank a provider higher because it pays us. The advertiser disclosure explains each one in full.
Can I use your charts, maps and tables?
From our research, yes. Reports, their charts and tables, and our derived data are published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0: reuse them with credit to The Care Ratings. Values that come from CMS are public domain. For anything else on the site, ask us. The data license has the details by layer.
Can I get figures for my state or city?
Every study publishes state-by-state figures: see the table under each study's map, or the one-page state summaries linked from each study above. For anything else, email data@thecareratings.com with the place, the measure and your deadline.
How do I report an error?
Tell us the page, table and figure through our contact page or at press@thecareratings.com. We respond within five business days, correct confirmed errors in place and record every correction in our public corrections log. If a facility's own record is wrong, the fix has to come from CMS, the source of every value.
Who writes your research?
Reports are published under the organization's name, the Care Ratings Team. Every report names its reviewers and discloses any interest that could bear on the work, and its methods, code and tables are public. Our editorial standards describe the process.
Can I interview someone or get a comment?
Email press@thecareratings.com with your outlet, your topic and your deadline.
08Contact
Press inquiries
Tell us your name and outlet, your deadline with time zone, and the question or the figure you are checking. On deadline? Start the subject line with DEADLINE.
Data requests
data@thecareratings.comState, city or custom cuts of our data, and questions about a release.
Corrections
Contact formName the page, table and figure. We respond within five business days.
Advertising and partnerships
sales@thecareratings.comSponsorships, listings and partnership proposals. This inbox is not for press.
Everything else
Contact pageSupport, facility claims and general questions.
Mailing addressWatch Digital LLC, 8735 Dunwoody Place, Suite 460, Atlanta, GA 30350
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