Data Sources & Methodology

CareSentinel computes no score of its own

There is no CareSentinel rating, index, composite, or risk model anywhere on this site. Every number, flag, and status you see — star ratings, deficiency citations and their scope/severity letters, civil money penalty totals, the abuse icon, Special Focus Facility status — is CMS’s own published figure, restated. That is a design decision, not a limitation: a figure we computed would be ours to defend; a figure CMS published is independently verifiable by anyone, against the same public source, in minutes.

Data sources

CareSentinel ingests the following CMS Care Compare nursing-home datasets, published at data.cms.gov/provider-data. Row counts below are from the current loaded snapshot (Jun 2026); CMS refreshes the underlying files on a monthly cycle, and CareSentinel re-ingests monthly.

Supporting lookups also ingested: State & US averages · citation descriptions (F-tag text) · survey dates & summaries · health-inspection cut points · data-collection intervals.

Definitions — CMS’s own, not ours

Every term used on a facility page is defined by CMS, not by CareSentinel. The controlling sources:

Deficiency / F-tag

A deficiency is a surveyed finding that a facility failed to meet a federal participation requirement for long-term-care facilities under 42 CFR Part 483, Subpart B. Each requirement is identified by an “F-tag”, per CMS’s surveyor guidance in the State Operations Manual (CMS Pub. 100-07), Appendix PP.

Scope & severity (A–L)

CMS classifies each deficiency on its own twelve-cell grid — severity (potential for harm → immediate jeopardy) crossed with scope (isolated / pattern / widespread) — yielding letters A through L, per the State Operations Manual, Chapter 7 (survey and enforcement process). CareSentinel plots the facility’s current-cycle letters on CMS’s grid and adds nothing to them.

Immediate Jeopardy (J/K/L)

CMS’s highest severity classification, defined in the State Operations Manual, Appendix Q — Core Guidelines for Determining Immediate Jeopardy: noncompliance that has caused or is likely to cause serious injury, harm, impairment, or death.

Abuse icon

The abuse icon on Care Compare is assigned by CMS under its own published methodology in the CMS Five-Star Quality Rating System Technical Users’ Guide: an abuse-related citation (deficiency tag F600 and related, under 42 CFR §483.12 — freedom from abuse, neglect, and exploitation) at a harm level on the most recent survey cycle, or repeat potential-for-harm abuse citations across the two most recent cycles. CareSentinel restates the icon exactly as CMS publishes it — never from a threshold of its own.

Special Focus Facility (SFF) / SFF candidate

CMS’s program for nursing homes with a persistent record of serious deficiencies, per the CMS Special Focus Facility Program posting (cms.gov, updated monthly). A candidate is listed by CMS as eligible for the program and is not on the active watch list — CareSentinel preserves that distinction everywhere it renders.

Civil money penalty (CMP)

A federal enforcement remedy imposed by CMS under 42 CFR Part 488, Subpart F (§§488.430–488.444) — enforcement of compliance for long-term-care facilities with deficiencies. CareSentinel sums the CMP amounts exactly as published in the Care Compare penalties file — the dollar figure is CMS’s, not an estimate.

No longer certified (decertified)

A facility absent from the current CMS data release is shown as no longer Medicare-certified, dated to the federal data period it first went absent from — never to a fabricated decertification date. (Termination of a provider agreement by CMS is governed by 42 CFR §489.53.)

Provenance & snapshot

CareSentinel loads each monthly CMS release as a single, content-hashed snapshot (current: Jun2026:c48cbefba4ec87ad). Every facility page carries a visible “Record as of” month and restates that frozen snapshot — it is not a live re-query, so what you read is exactly what the dated federal release said. When CMS publishes a new release, the whole site moves to the new snapshot atomically; a failed load never half-updates (the prior snapshot keeps serving).

Reproduce any figure yourself

1. Open medicare.gov/care-compare and search the facility by name — or use the per-facility CMS record link on its CareSentinel page, which deep-links the same CCN.
2. Compare the star ratings, health inspection citations, and penalty history shown there against the CareSentinel page.
3. For bulk verification, download the same monthly files CareSentinel ingests from data.cms.gov/provider-data (Provider Information, Health Deficiencies, Penalties, Ownership) and filter by the facility’s CCN.
4. Note the “Record as of” month on the CareSentinel page: if CMS has published a newer release since, compare against the archived month, not today’s — the page restates its dated snapshot by design.

Limitations of the federal record

• Data lag. CMS publishes monthly; surveys and penalties can take weeks or months to appear in the public files. CareSentinel re-ingests monthly, so a page can trail real-world events by one release cycle or more.
• Survey-cycle, point-in-time data. Inspections are periodic samples, not continuous monitoring. The federal record may understate what actually occurred, and inspection findings are point-in-time survey results, not a determination that any specific resident was harmed.
• Appeals and disputes. Facilities may dispute deficiencies and appeal penalties through CMS’s own processes; findings shown here can later be revised or removed in the federal source, and the next snapshot will reflect that.

Listing is not an accusation

Inclusion, ordering, or display of any facility on this site is a factual presentation of the public CMS record. It is not a determination or allegation of fault, negligence, or harm by CareSentinel against any facility or person. A facility that believes a figure shown here misstates the CMS source can dispute it through the correction protocol below.

Facility correction & dispute protocol

1. Email records@caregiverhelpnow.com with the facility’s CCN, the specific figure in question, and the CMS source you believe it misstates.
2. CareSentinel targets an acknowledgment within 5 business days. If our page misstates the CMS file for the stated snapshot month, we correct the page against that source.
3. If the dispute is with the underlying federal record itself (not our restatement of it), that record belongs to CMS — corrections flow through CMS’s and the state survey agency’s own dispute processes, and the next monthly snapshot will reflect any revision CMS publishes.