The CMS-2567: The Form That Records Every Violation

What is a CMS-2567 form?

A CMS-2567 is the standardized federal form surveyors use to document the results of a nursing home inspection. Its formal title is the "Statement of Deficiencies and Plan of Correction." When inspectors from your state's survey agency visit a Medicare- or Medicaid-certified home, every federal requirement the facility fails to meet is recorded on this form as a separate deficiency. The completed form becomes part of the public inspection record that CMS uses to help families locate and evaluate a home 1Ref 1Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2025).Finding a Nursing Home.That CMS makes nursing home inspection information public and directs families to use it, alongside Care Compare, to locate and evaluate a home..

The same form is used in every state, in the same format, so once you can read one you can read any of them. Each entry pairs the surveyor's finding with the facility's response. Learning to read a nursing home inspection report starts with this single document, because the 2567 is where the raw findings live before they are ever summarized into a star or a headline.

A deficiency is a specific, cited failure to meet a federal care standard — a documented finding, not an opinion.

What is written on the form?

The 2567 is laid out in two columns, and understanding the split is the key to reading it. On the left, the surveyor states each deficiency: the exact federal requirement that was not met, identified by a tag number, followed by a written narrative of what they saw, heard, or read in the records. On the right, the facility writes its plan of correction — what it will do, by when, to fix the problem and keep it from happening again.

A single citation on the form typically contains:

• The deficiency tag — a numbered federal requirement, often called an F-tag.
• The surveyor narrative — the evidence, frequently quoting records, observations, and interviews.
• A scope-and-severity level — how widespread the problem was and how much harm it caused.
• The plan of correction — the facility's own account of its fix.

One caution about that last column. Reading a facility's plan of correction tells you what the home promised, not that the problem was actually solved. A plan of correction is a commitment, and whether it held is confirmed only at a later inspection.

How serious is each deficiency?

Not every deficiency carries the same weight, and the form captures the difference with a scope-and-severity rating. Scope is how many residents were affected — an isolated instance, a pattern, or something widespread. Severity is how much harm resulted, from a problem with the potential for minimal harm up to immediate jeopardy, where a resident's health or safety is in serious and immediate danger. Together they place each citation on a lettered grid.

A single low-level, isolated citation means far less than a high-severity one — or the same problem cited survey after survey.

Those ratings are not just labels; they feed the home's public score. Health inspections are one of the three domains — alongside staffing and quality measures — behind Medicare's Five-Star rating 2Ref 2Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2026).Five-Star Quality Rating System.That health inspections are one of the three domains — with staffing and quality measures — behind each certified nursing home's overall Five-Star rating.. The rating is calculated by a published methodology that assigns points to each deficiency according to its scope and severity, and weights the most recent survey most heavily 3Ref 3Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2025).Design for Care Compare Nursing Home Five-Star Quality Rating System: Technical Users' Guide.That the health-inspection score is calculated by a published methodology that assigns points to each deficiency by its scope and severity and weights the most recent survey most heavily.. A fuller walkthrough of the scope-and-severity grid, decoded level by level, and of what a deficiency citation actually means lives in its own guides.

Where do you find a nursing home's CMS-2567?

The inspection results are public, and there are two main ways in. The most direct is Medicare's Care Compare, the official federal tool for finding and comparing certified nursing homes by their quality ratings, health-inspection results, and staffing 4Ref 4Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2026).Find Healthcare Providers: Compare Care Near You (Care Compare).That Care Compare is the official federal tool for finding and comparing certified nursing homes by quality ratings, health-inspection results, and staffing.. From a facility's page you can open its recent health-inspection findings — the summarized output of its 2567s. For the underlying data, CMS also publishes a survey-summary dataset covering the last three years of health, fire-safety, infection-control, and complaint inspections, including the counts of deficiencies at each home 5Ref 5Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2026).Survey Summary (Nursing homes including rehab services dataset).That CMS publishes a per-facility summary of the last three years of health, fire-safety, infection-control, and complaint inspections, including the counts of deficiencies..

Many states go a step further and post the full 2567 narratives — the surveyor's actual words — on their own inspection portals. Finding inspection reports online is often a matter of starting at Care Compare for the overview and then going to the state portal for the full text. Vetting a nursing home well usually means reading both, because the summary tells you how many and how serious, while the narrative tells you what actually happened.

What the form does and doesn't tell you

A 2567 is a snapshot of a single inspection window, not a live feed. A home may have fixed a problem since a bad survey, or slipped since a clean one, so the date on each report matters. The most useful reading looks at several years together and gives the most recent survey the most weight — which is also how the rating itself is built. The public survey-summary data covers the last three years for exactly this reason 5Ref 5Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2026).Survey Summary (Nursing homes including rehab services dataset).That CMS publishes a per-facility summary of the last three years of health, fire-safety, infection-control, and complaint inspections, including the counts of deficiencies..

Two other cautions keep the form honest. A plan of correction shows intent, not proof; the fix is verified at the next inspection, not when it is written. And raw counts can mislead — a home with few citations that is rarely inspected is not necessarily safer than one with more citations that draws frequent, targeted scrutiny. Context, not the count alone, is what the form rewards.

How the form feeds the star rating

The deficiencies on a home's recent 2567s are the raw material for the health-inspection domain of Medicare's Five-Star rating, one of three domains alongside staffing and quality measures 2Ref 2Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2026).Five-Star Quality Rating System.That health inspections are one of the three domains — with staffing and quality measures — behind each certified nursing home's overall Five-Star rating.. The scoring weights each deficiency by its scope and severity and counts recent surveys more heavily than older ones 3Ref 3Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2025).Design for Care Compare Nursing Home Five-Star Quality Rating System: Technical Users' Guide.That the health-inspection score is calculated by a published methodology that assigns points to each deficiency by its scope and severity and weights the most recent survey most heavily.. In other words, a home's health-inspection star is only ever as good as the citations on its inspection forms.

That is the practical case for reading the 2567 itself rather than stopping at the star. The star compresses a rich, specific record into a single number. The form is where the specifics are — the actual events, in the surveyor's own words — and those specifics are what tell you whether a low rating reflects paperwork lapses or a pattern of real harm.

Reading the form as a family

What matters most is the pattern, not any single citation. Almost every home has some deficiencies; a few low-level, isolated ones that were corrected are very different from repeated actual-harm findings or the same problem cited survey after survey. Those are the genuine nursing home red flags, and they are visible on the form long before they surface in a rating.

The worst and most persistent performers can be placed on CMS's Special Focus Facility list, which subjects them to more frequent inspections and progressive enforcement 6Ref 6Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2022).CMS Publishes National List of Poor-Performing Nursing Homes, Key Tool for Families Seeking Quality Care.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.. If a home you are considering appears there, or its 2567s show serious, recurring citations, that is a signal worth taking seriously — and a good reason to bring specific questions to the administrator and, if you have concerns, to your long-term care ombudsman.