Data sources & methodology
Where our numbers come from, how we process them, and what they can and can't tell you.
Primary source: CMS Provider Data Catalog
All facility records and star ratings come from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Provider Data Catalog — the same Care Compare datasets that power Medicare.gov. This data is a work of the U.S. federal government and is in the public domain.
We ingest these datasets:
- Nursing homes — Provider Information (overall, health-inspection, staffing and quality-measure ratings, staffing hours, penalties).
- Hospitals — Hospital General Information (overall hospital rating, measure groups).
- Home health agencies — quality-of-patient-care star rating and services.
- Hospices — general information (ownership, location, certification).
- Dialysis centers — five-star rating and clinical outcome measures.
Data as of June 20, 2026. We resolve the latest file for each dataset directly from the CMS metastore API on every refresh, so we always import the current version.
How we process the data
- Download the latest CSV for each facility type from CMS.
- Normalize every facility into a single model keyed by its CMS Certification Number (CCN), with a consistent rating scale, ownership category, and address.
- Geocode facilities. Nursing homes include precise coordinates from CMS; for the other types we map each facility to the centroid of its ZIP code using the public-domain U.S. Census ZCTA gazetteer, so maps and “near me” work everywhere.
- Roll up counts and average ratings by state, county and city to power location pages.
- Cache & publish deterministic pages so each one can be served from the edge.
Limitations
- Ratings reflect the most recent CMS data and can lag the real situation at a facility.
- CMS data can contain errors or omissions, which will appear here too.
- For non-nursing-home types, map pins use ZIP-code centroids and are approximate.
- Hospices are not assigned a CMS overall star rating in this dataset.
- Cura Rank is informational only and is not a substitute for visiting a facility or speaking with the provider and CMS.
Attribution & licensing
Source data: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Provider Data Catalog (public domain). Geocoding: U.S. Census Bureau Gazetteer (public domain). Maps: © OpenStreetMap contributors. Cura Rank is an independent project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by CMS or Medicare.