We built Care Safety Check because the information families need most when placing a loved one in a nursing home or assisted living facility is buried in government databases that most people have never heard of — and were never designed to be read by families under stress.
What this site is
Care Safety Check translates public federal inspection data into clear, plain-English safety summaries for nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Every report is built from the same data the U.S. government uses to regulate these facilities — inspection records, staffing levels, enforcement actions, and quality measures from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Care Compare database.
We do not rate facilities based on marketing materials, self-reported surveys, or paid placements. We do not accept payments from facilities. Every score reflects what federal inspectors found — nothing more, nothing less.
Why we built it
Most families have three to seven days to choose a nursing home. That decision is made under financial pressure, emotional exhaustion, and often from a hospital waiting room. The public data that could help — inspection reports, deficiency citations, staffing records, enforcement actions — exists but is scattered across government databases that are difficult to navigate and written in regulatory language that takes expertise to interpret.
The result is that families routinely choose facilities based on location, bed availability, and brochures. Some of those facilities have serious recent safety records that any family would want to know about. We think that is wrong, and fixable.
Care Safety Check currently covers 527 certified nursing facilities across Maryland, Virginia, and Washington DC. We are expanding toward broader national coverage. If you are looking for a facility outside our current coverage area, the same government data we use is publicly available at medicare.gov/care-compare.
How our scores work
Every facility receives a Care Safety Signal™ score — a 0–100 weighted score built from four components drawn from public CMS data:
- Inspection history (30%) — CMS weighted health survey score and inspection star rating
- Violation & penalty record (25%) — fines, civil money penalties, payment denials, and Special Focus Facility status
- Staffing (25%) — RN hours and total nurse staffing hours per resident day, compared to national averages
- Complaint history (20%) — complaint deficiencies, infection citations, and abuse or neglect complaint flags
When a facility has a recent Immediate Jeopardy finding, active abuse citation, or Special Focus Facility status, a hard safety override caps the maximum possible score — regardless of how other metrics look. A facility cannot score its way out of a serious recent safety event.
A full explanation of how scores are calculated is on our How It Works page.
What our scores do not measure
We are explicit about the limits of this data because honesty is more useful than false confidence.
Our scores reflect what federal inspectors documented during official visits. They do not capture: the quality of daily life and resident dignity, family satisfaction, culture of care, end-of-life care quality, how management responds to concerns, or how a facility feels during an unannounced evening visit. Inspection data has known limitations — surveyor variability between states, underreporting of incidents, and the gap between what inspectors see on a scheduled visit and what happens every other day of the year.
A facility with a strong Care Safety Signal™ score may still not be the right fit for your loved one. A facility with a lower score may have improved significantly since its last inspection. Our scores are a starting point for research — not a substitute for visiting in person, talking to current residents and families, and asking hard questions.
Independence
Care Safety Check is an independent publication. We do not accept placement referral fees, sponsored listings, or any payments from care facilities. We have no financial relationship with any facility listed on this site. We do not make money when a family chooses a particular facility.
Our revenue comes from two sources: a modest one-time fee for printable facility PDF reports, and third-party display advertising on informational pages (such as guides and how-to articles). Ads on this site are served by Google AdSense. We do not control which specific ads appear, but we actively block ad categories related to care facilities, senior care placement services, and nursing home chains. Ads are never displayed on individual facility score pages. If you see an ad from a facility or placement agency on a facility report page, please contact us immediately at info@caresafetycheck.com.
We link back to every government source we use so families can verify any data point themselves.
Contact and corrections
For questions about a report, data concerns, or press inquiries, reach us at hello@caresafetycheck.com or through our contact page.
If you are a facility operator and believe your CMS data contains an error, the correct path is to work directly with your state survey agency or CMS. We cannot alter government records — but once CMS corrects the underlying data, our scores update automatically on the next monthly refresh.