In Case You Missed It….Major Update to Nursing Home Care Compare

In Case You Missed It….Major Update to Nursing Home Care Compare

On June 18, 2025 CMS released update memos QSO-25-19-All and QSO-25-20-NH with significant information related to information to be made available via Nursing Home Care Compare. The first memo notifies that the official FORM CMS-2567: Statement of Deficiencies and Plan of Correction will be publicly releasable within 14 days after receipt by the provider, supplier, or lab. Previously, CMS held the public release of the CMS-2567 for up to 90 days after the completion of the survey or until a POC or AOC had been approved by the SA or CMS location. CMS is updating their practice to allow the release of the CMS-2567 immediately upon receipt by the provider, supplier, or lab. They are not changing the provider/supplier review window. Providers and suppliers will continue to have time to review and respond to the survey findings through the POC or AOC process. “If CMS is unable to approve a POC/AOC and instead conducts a revisit survey, there will not be a POC/AOC to release. CMS indicates “with greater transparency and more timely access to survey information, beneficiaries are able to make informed decisions about where they receive their care.”

In QSO-25-20-NH CMS announces 4 areas of change.

1. Nursing Home Chains (i.e., groups of Medicare-certified nursing homes that are connected through common owners, and operators) will now have performance data posted. CMS will begin posting average overall 5-star ratings, health inspection, staffing, and QM ratings for each chain directly on Care Compare in a more “consumer-friendly format”. This will start on July 30, 2025.

2. To help ensure the Care Compare health inspection rating more accurately reflects current performance in nursing homes, CMS will be removing any inspection in the third cycle, or the oldest surveys, from the rating calculation. This will begin in July 2025. CMS states that their preliminary analyses indicate this change will have a minimal impact on overall ratings. (Approximately 80% will not change, roughly 20% of homes will have “meaningful changes”). CMS indicated that facilities with “serious quality issues” three surveys ago, but that took steps to improve their quality would be given credit for their efforts by removal of the negative impact from their old performance. However, facilities that had high performance three surveys ago, but had a significant decline in quality will no longer benefit from old performance data that doesn’t reflect current conditions. CMS will continue to use a three-year lookback period for complaint and infection control inspections. The chart below shows how survey weights will be allocated with greater emphasis on the most current cycle.

3. To improve measure accuracy CMS will update the quality measure (QM) assessing the number of long-stay residents receiving antipsychotic medications to include Medicare and Medicaid claims and Medicare Advantage encounter data, in addition to the MDS data currently being used in the existing measure. CMS will incorporate the new measure on Care Compare on October 29, 2025 and indicates that the national percentage under the existing measure is 14.64% but will increase to 16.98% under the new measure due to improved accuracy.

4. CMS will be removing the resident staff and COVID-19 Vaccination measures from the main profile page of each nursing home on Care Compare effective July 30, 2025.

Find more details in the QSO memos at:

https://www.cms.gov/files/document/qso-25-19-all.pdf

https://www.cms.gov/files/document/qso-25-20-nh.pdf

Next steps:

• • Access Proactive’s Survey Ready Toolkit—an 8-week survey preparedness guide with easy to use resources for team assignments to prepare for and monitor survey readiness.
  • Reduce deficiencies by attending upcoming sessions in the Survey Smart training series and accessing past sessions on-demand. Gain insights into the most commonly cited tags and how to avoid them.
  • Schedule a mock survey with the Proactive team
  • Contact us to request a 5 Star Analysis that includes a Facility Specific Work Plan

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