How to Look Up Nursing Home Violations and Inspection Records

Every nursing home certified for Medicare or Medicaid is inspected on a regular cycle, and the results are public. Inspectors document deficiencies, classify how serious each one was, and file written reports. Most families see only a star rating. This guide shows you how to look up the underlying record for any nursing home in the country, and how to read what you find.

How Nursing Home Inspections Work

Nursing homes are regulated federally by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), with inspections carried out by each state's survey agency. In California that agency is the Department of Public Health; every state has an equivalent.

Surveyors make two main kinds of visits. Standard surveys are the routine, unannounced full inspections that happen on a recurring cycle. Complaint surveys respond to specific allegations from residents, families, or staff. When surveyors find a violation of the federal requirements, they document it as a deficiency in a written report called a Statement of Deficiencies, which records what the surveyors observed, which requirement was violated, and how serious it was.

These reports, along with penalties and ownership information, are public data. They exist for every certified facility, in every state.

What F-Tags and Severity Letters Mean

Nursing home deficiencies use a federal vocabulary that takes a few minutes to learn and then makes every record in the country readable.

F-Tags

Each federal requirement a nursing home must meet has a code called an F-tag: the letter F followed by a number. A deficiency for inadequate infection control cites one F-tag; a deficiency for a medication error rate cites another. The tag tells you exactly which requirement was violated, which means you can compare deficiencies across facilities and across states. The nursing home violations index explains what individual F-tags mean in plain English.

The Scope and Severity Grid

Every deficiency also gets a letter from A to L. The letter encodes two things at once: how severe the harm was, and how widespread the problem was.

Letters	What they mean
A, B, C	Potential for minimal harm
D, E, F	Potential for more than minimal harm, no actual harm found
G, H, I	Actual harm to one or more residents
J, K, L	Immediate jeopardy to resident health or safety

Within each band, the letters step up by scope: the first letter marks an isolated finding, the second a pattern, the third a widespread problem.

What Counts as Serious

Letters G through L are the serious range: actual harm or immediate jeopardy. A nursing home with a J, K, or L deficiency had a finding severe enough that surveyors concluded residents were in immediate danger. D through F deficiencies are common across the industry; G and above are the ones that should drive your questions.

Star Ratings vs. Inspection Records

Medicare's Care Compare site assigns nursing homes one to five stars, combining health inspections, staffing levels, and quality measures. The star rating is a useful first filter, and it is built from real data.

But a star is a summary, and summaries flatten. Two three-star facilities can have very different records: one held back by paperwork findings, the other by an actual-harm deficiency two years ago. The inspection record is the evidence underneath the rating. Reading the deficiencies themselves, what was found, how serious it was, and whether it recurred, tells you what the star cannot.

How to Look Up a Nursing Home, Step by Step

Step 1: Browse by State

Start at the nursing home directory. Facilities are organized by state, then county, then city. Open the facility's page to see its inspection history, deficiencies with severity letters, and penalties in one place.

There is no name search for nursing homes today, and license-number lookup tools built for state systems do not cover federally certified facilities. Browsing by location is the path: state, county, city, facility.

Step 2: Read the Inspection History

Open the most recent standard survey first; it reflects the facility's most recent full inspection. Then look at complaint surveys and what each one concluded. A facility whose deficiencies come mostly from complaint surveys has a different story than one with findings only on routine cycles.

Step 3: Read the Deficiencies by Severity

Scan the severity letters before reading details. G through L findings deserve your attention first. For each one, read what the surveyors observed and which F-tag was cited. The violations index translates the F-tag system if a citation is hard to parse.

Step 4: Check Whether Problems Recurred

A deficiency that appears once and is corrected is part of normal operations. The same F-tag appearing survey after survey is a pattern, and patterns in actual-harm territory are the strongest signal a record can give you.

Red Flags vs. Routine Deficiencies

Most nursing homes have deficiencies on file; a record with zero findings across multiple surveys is rare. The work is separating the routine from the serious.

Red Flags

• Any deficiency in the immediate jeopardy range (J, K, or L)
• Actual-harm findings (G, H, I), especially involving neglect, pressure injuries, or medication errors
• The same F-tag cited across multiple surveys
• Substantiated complaint surveys involving resident care
• Federal penalties: civil money penalties or payment denials on the record

Usually Routine

• A small number of D-F deficiencies corrected by the next survey
• Findings about documentation or food service procedures with no resident harm
• An isolated finding from years ago with no recurrence

When in doubt, read the surveyors' own narrative. The Statement of Deficiencies describes exactly what was observed, and its specificity usually makes the seriousness clear.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are nursing home inspection records public?

Yes. Inspection results, deficiencies, and penalties for every Medicare and Medicaid certified nursing home are public federal data. ReadyRule publishes these records with plain-English context, and Medicare's Care Compare site publishes the underlying reports.

What is an F-tag?

An F-tag is the code for a specific federal requirement nursing homes must meet, written as the letter F followed by a number. Every deficiency cites the F-tag that was violated, so the tag tells you exactly which rule was broken.

Which nursing home deficiencies are serious?

Deficiencies rated G through L are the serious range. G, H, and I mean surveyors found actual harm to residents. J, K, and L mean immediate jeopardy, the most severe classification in the federal system.

How often are nursing homes inspected?

Standard surveys happen on a recurring cycle, at least once every 15 months for each facility, with additional complaint surveys whenever specific allegations are investigated. Facilities with worse records tend to accumulate more visits.

Why can't I search nursing homes by name?

The directory is organized geographically: state, then county, then city. Name search is not available for nursing homes today, so the reliable path to a facility's record is browsing to its city and opening its page from the list.