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How to Look Up a Nursing Home's Fines and Penalties

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A nursing home's fines are not a secret you have to pry loose. They sit on a government website, next to the inspection findings that caused them, for anyone to read. What is harder is knowing what a fine means: a large penalty can signal a serious lapse, or a facility that already fixed a problem. Here is where the record lives and how to read it without drawing the wrong conclusion.

Last updated: July 2026

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Where nursing home fines are published

Federal penalties against a certified nursing home are public record, and they live in one place: Care Compare, the official federal tool for finding and comparing Medicare- and Medicaid-certified nursing homes on quality star ratings, health-inspection results, and staffing 1. It is free, it requires no account, and it covers every certified facility in the country. If a nursing home takes Medicare or Medicaid, its federal enforcement history is on this site.

The path is short. Search the facility by name or location, open its page, and look for the section on penalties. There you find two kinds of federal enforcement:

  • Civil money penalties, which are fines: a dollar amount CMS imposed against the facility.
  • Payment denials, where CMS stopped paying the facility for new admissions for a period.

A civil money penalty, often written CMP, is a fine that CMS levies on a nursing home for a deficiency, either as a one-time amount or as a per-day amount that accrues until the problem is corrected.

The same page carries the facility's health-inspection results and its star rating, which is the point of putting them together. A fine is a consequence. The inspection is the cause. Reading the fine without the finding behind it is reading the sentence without the crime.

The document behind the fine

A fine is a number. The story is in the inspection, and that too is public. When a state surveyor inspects a nursing home on behalf of CMS and finds a problem, the finding is written up as a deficiency on a standard federal form. The consumer guidance from CMS on finding and evaluating a nursing home points families to exactly this inspection information 2, and it is worth going one layer deeper than the summary.

The form to know by name is the CMS-2567 Statement of Deficiencies. It records what the surveyor observed, which regulation it violated, and how serious it was. A fine is often attached to one or more of these findings, so the 2567 tells you what the money was actually about: a medication error, a fall that was not prevented, an infection-control lapse, a call light that went unanswered.

Each deficiency also carries a scope-and-severity code, a letter that grades how bad the finding was and how many residents it touched. That grid is its own subject, but the short version is that not all deficiencies are equal, and the letter tells you which kind you are looking at. A facility with several low-level, quickly-corrected findings is a different animal from one with a finding graded as actual harm. The fine amount alone does not distinguish them. The 2567 does.

How to read a fine without drawing the wrong conclusion

This is where families go wrong, in both directions. A fine is a data point, not a verdict, and it needs context that the dollar figure hides. Two facilities can carry the same penalty for very different reasons, and the number by itself will mislead you every time.

Some things a raw fine does not tell you, and that the fuller record does:

  • When it happened. A serious penalty from four years ago, followed by clean inspections since, describes a facility that had a bad stretch and recovered. The same penalty last quarter describes something current. Look at the date first.
  • Whether it was fixed. A fine usually comes attached to a required correction. Whether the facility corrected it, and whether the next inspection confirmed that, matters more than the fine itself.
  • What it was for. A penalty tied to paperwork is not a penalty tied to a resident being hurt. The 2567 draws that line.
  • Whether it is a pattern. One fine is an incident. A run of them, across years, across the same problem, is a pattern, and a pattern is the thing you are actually trying to detect.

The question worth answering is not "has this home ever been fined," because most have. It is whether the serious findings are recent, repeated, and about resident harm.

The star rating is a starting point, not the answer

It is tempting to skip the penalties entirely and trust the star. Resist that, and understand what the star is first. The CMS Five-Star system rates each certified nursing home from one to five stars overall, and that overall star is built from three separate domains: health inspections, staffing, and quality measures 3. Enforcement history feeds the health-inspection domain, so a fine does influence the star, but it is diluted by everything else the star absorbs.

The methodology behind those ratings is documented in detail in the CMS technical users' guide, which lays out how the health-inspection, staffing, and quality-measure domains are each scored and then combined into the overall figure 4. Two things follow from reading it. First, a home can hold a decent overall star while one domain underneath is weak, and health inspections may be the weak one. Second, the star is a rolling summary, so a very recent serious event may not have moved it yet.

So use the star to sort, then open the record to decide. A one-star home is telling you to look hard. A four-star home is not telling you to skip the penalties page. The star points you at the facilities worth reading closely; it does not do the reading for you.

The list that flags the worst performers

Above the level of individual fines, there is a federal list built specifically to flag the facilities where penalties are not one-off events. CMS's Special Focus Facility program identifies the poorest-performing nursing homes, lists them publicly, and subjects them to more frequent inspections and progressive enforcement 5. If a home you are considering appears on this list, that is a heavier signal than any single fine, because the list is designed to capture persistence rather than a bad quarter.

There is a candor to add here, because the program has a documented limit. An HHS Office of Inspector General review found that within three years of graduating from the Special Focus Facility program, 64 percent of facilities went on to receive a serious deficiency, over the 2013 to 2022 period studied 6. In plain terms: graduating from the watch list is not the same as being fixed.

Within three years of leaving CMS's poor-performer program, 64 percent of nursing homes received a serious deficiency again 6.

The practical lesson is not to trust the label in either direction. A facility currently on the list is worth serious caution. A facility that recently left it is not thereby cleared. Read the actual inspection history for the years since. The list tells you where to look; the record tells you what you found.

A ten-minute method for one facility

Put together, checking a single nursing home's penalties is a short and repeatable exercise, and doing it in order keeps you from being swayed by one alarming number out of context. None of it requires an account or a fee, and all of it is drawn from the same federal record.

  • Open the facility on Care Compare and read its overall star and its three domain stars, health inspections first 13.
  • Find the penalties section. Note the civil money penalties and payment denials, and above all their dates.
  • Open the inspection findings. For any serious or recent penalty, read what the deficiency was actually for, using the CMS-2567 Statement of Deficiencies.
  • Check the pattern across years. One old finding, corrected, is not the same as a recurring one.
  • Check the Special Focus Facility status. On the list, or recently off it, changes how hard you look 5.
  • Compare, don't judge in isolation. Run the same steps on two or three homes. A fine only means something relative to the alternatives you actually have.

This is the core of vetting a nursing home from public records, and the fines page is one instrument on a larger dashboard. The inspection reports available online, the staffing data, and the ownership record each answer a different question, and the fine is most useful read alongside them rather than alone.

Common questions

Federal civil money penalties against Medicare- or Medicaid-certified nursing homes are public and appear on Care Compare. State-level penalties, and enforcement against facilities that do not participate in Medicare or Medicaid, may live in a separate state system instead. For most nursing homes the federal record on Care Compare is the fullest single source, but a state survey agency's own portal can carry additional detail.

Not necessarily. The date is what tells you. A large penalty from several years ago, followed by clean inspections, describes a facility that had a serious problem and corrected it. The same penalty last quarter describes a current one. Read the dates and the inspections since before drawing a conclusion from the dollar amount, which by itself carries neither the timing nor the reason.

A deficiency is the finding: something a surveyor observed that violated a regulation, written up on the CMS-2567 form. A fine, or civil money penalty, is one possible consequence of a deficiency. Many deficiencies carry no fine at all and are handled through a required correction plan instead. The deficiency tells you what happened; the fine tells you how seriously CMS treated it.

Yes. Care Compare lists the civil money penalty amounts along with the dates and any denials of payment for new admissions. What the raw amount will not tell you is what the penalty was for or whether it was corrected, which is why the inspection findings on the same facility's page are worth opening alongside the dollar figure rather than instead of it.

Rarely on its own. Most nursing homes have some enforcement history, so a single fine is common rather than disqualifying. What is worth ruling on is the pattern: serious findings that are recent, repeated, and about resident harm, especially if the facility appears on the Special Focus Facility list. One old, corrected fine is weak evidence; a run of them is strong evidence.

The findings summary is on the facility's Care Compare page, under health inspections. The underlying document is the CMS-2567 Statement of Deficiencies, which records what the surveyor observed, the regulation cited, and the severity. It is the layer beneath the star and the fine, and it is where a penalty stops being a number and becomes a description of what actually happened.

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When the record signals real concern

  • —Serious deficiencies, or civil money penalties tied to resident harm, that are recent rather than years old
  • —The same category of finding repeating across multiple inspection cycles rather than a single isolated event
  • —The facility currently appears on CMS's Special Focus Facility list of poorest performers
  • —A facility that recently graduated from the Special Focus list but shows new serious findings since

Looking up a fine is research, not an emergency. If you believe a resident is being abused, neglected, or is in immediate danger right now, call 911, and separately report the concern to your state's long-term care ombudsman or survey agency.

This article explains how to find and interpret public federal enforcement data. It is general education, not legal advice or a rating of any specific facility, and it does not recommend any home. Enforcement records and the tools that publish them change; confirm any figure against the current Care Compare record before relying on it.

References

  1. 1.Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2026). Find Healthcare Providers: Compare Care Near You (Care Compare). Medicare.gov (U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services). link ✓The existence and function of Care Compare as the official free federal tool for finding and comparing certified nursing homes on quality star ratings, health-inspection results, and staffing, where each facility's enforcement record appears.
  2. 2.Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2025). Finding a Nursing Home. CMS.gov (U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services). link ✓Consumer guidance from CMS on locating and evaluating a nursing home, including using Care Compare and reviewing inspection information.
  3. 3.Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2026). Five-Star Quality Rating System. CMS.gov (U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services). link ✓That the CMS Five-Star system rates each certified nursing home one to five stars overall and on three domains, health inspections, staffing, and quality measures, with enforcement feeding the health-inspection domain.
  4. 4.Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2025). Design for Care Compare Nursing Home Five-Star Quality Rating System: Technical Users' Guide. CMS.gov (U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services). link ✓The methodology by which the health-inspection, staffing, and quality-measure domains are each scored and combined into an overall star rating.
  5. 5.Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2022). CMS Publishes National List of Poor-Performing Nursing Homes, Key Tool for Families Seeking Quality Care. CMS.gov Newsroom (U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services). link ✓That CMS's Special Focus Facility program identifies and publicly lists the poorest-performing nursing homes and subjects them to more frequent inspections and progressive enforcement.
  6. 6.U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General (2025). CMS's Special Focus Facility Program for Nursing Homes Has Not Yielded Lasting Improvements. HHS Office of Inspector General. link ✓The OIG finding that within three years of graduating from CMS's Special Focus Facility program, 64 percent of facilities received a serious deficiency, over the 2013 to 2022 period.

6 sources, numbered by first appearance. General health information, not medical advice. AI-assisted editorial content — every citation independently verified. Editorial policy

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