Guides

Nursing home guides

Plain-English answers to the questions families actually ask, drawn from public federal data. No jargon, no sponsored results.

• How to Tell If a Nursing Home Is Safe

  A practical checklist for judging nursing home safety from public federal data: Medicare ratings, inspection citations, staffing, turnover, fines, and the abuse and watch-list flags that matter most.

• Nursing Home Star Ratings Explained

  How the Medicare Five-Star nursing home rating works: the three components (health inspections, staffing, quality measures), how the overall rating is set, and what the stars do not tell you.

• What Is a Special Focus Facility (SFF)?

  A plain explanation of the federal Special Focus Facility (SFF) program: how CMS chooses these nursing homes, what SFF and SFF candidate mean, and how to check whether a facility is on the watch list.

• How to Report Nursing Home Abuse or Neglect

  Where and how to report suspected nursing home abuse or neglect: emergency steps, your state Long-Term Care Ombudsman, the state survey agency, Adult Protective Services, and what to document.