Higher staffing levels in a nursing home may mean higher quality of care for residents. This section provides information about the different types of nursing home staff and the average amount of time per resident that they spend providing care.

Nursing homes that are certified by Medicare - Opens in a new window and Medicaid - Opens in a new window regularly report clinical information for each of their residents to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). CMS assigns nursing homes a quality of resident care star rating based on their performance on 16 measures. These measures reflect, on average, how well nursing homes cares for their residents. Information is listed for 2 groups of residents:

• Short-stay residents - those who spent 100 days or less in a nursing home
• Long-stay residents - those who spent over 100 days in a nursing home

When a nursing home gets a serious citation or fails to correct a citation for a long period of time, this can result in a penalty. A penalty can be a fine against the nursing home or a denied payment from Medicare.