How CMS five-star ratings work
The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) publishes a five-star quality rating for most types of Medicare-certified facility. Here is what those stars actually mean — and what they don't.
The basics
Each facility gets between one and five stars. More stars mean better measured quality relative to other facilities. A five-star facility is rated much above average; a one-star facility is much below average. Ratings are recalculated by CMS on a regular schedule, so they change over time.
On Cura Rank we color the stars so the meaning is unmistakable: green for 4–5★, amber for 3★, and red for 1–2★.
By facility type
Overall rating combines health inspections, staffing and quality measures.
A single overall hospital rating built from dozens of quality measures.
A quality-of-patient-care star rating, in half-star steps.
No CMS overall star; quality is measured through surveys and the HCI.
A five-star rating built from clinical outcomes and patient experience.
Not necessarily. The stars summarize measured quality, but they can't capture everything that matters to you — distance, specific services, language, culture, or a recent change in management. Use the rating as a starting point, then visit and ask questions.
CMS refreshes the underlying data on a regular schedule (monthly for several datasets). We re-import the data regularly; the “data as of” date on each page tells you how current it is.
A facility may be too new, too small, or otherwise lack enough data for CMS to calculate a reliable star rating. Hospices, for example, are not assigned an overall star rating in this dataset.
Yes — the ratings come directly from CMS. Cura Rank is an independent site that organizes the public data; we don't change the ratings.
Source: CMS Five-Star Quality Rating System and the Provider Data Catalog.