How we cite CMS Care Compare data — and what we don't measure.
Fonteum does not independently rate, inspect, verify, endorse, or guarantee any home health agency. Where this site cites a CMS rating, the rating is CMS’s, published by CMS, with the source line and last-checked date in plain sight. This page documents what we cite, what we don’t, and where the limitations are.
- Methodology version
- v1.0
- Last reviewed
- 2026-05-03
What CMS Care Compare publishes.
Every home-health figure Fonteum cites comes from the CMS Care Compare Home Health Care Agencies master dataset (CMS dataset slug 6jpm-sxkc). The dataset publishes quarterly via the CMS Provider Data Catalog at data.cms.gov, under U.S. Government Works (public domain). License terms allow citation with attribution.
When a CMS field appears on this site, the rendered surface carries: (a) the source line "Source: CMS Care Compare · Last checked {date}", (b) the limitations sentence "CMS ratings are published by CMS and reflect the measure definitions in the source dataset", and (c) the non-endorsement sentence "Fonteum does not independently rate, inspect, verify, endorse, or guarantee any home health agency." These three are required, in writing, on every CMS-cited field.
- CMS Care Compare Home Health master dataset (slug 6jpm-sxkc)
- Published quarterly under U.S. Government Works (public domain)
- Source / last-checked-date / limitations triplet on every cited field
- Non-endorsement sentence on every cited field
CMS publishes the rating; Fonteum cites it.
The CMS quality-of-patient-care star rating is built from a published bundle of process and outcome measures that CMS calculates from Medicare claims and the Outcome and Assessment Information Set (OASIS). It runs from 1.0 to 5.0 in 0.5 increments. The current snapshot covers 12,392 Medicare-certified home-health agencies; 64.2% are rated, 35.8% are unrated.
Unrated agencies are not categorically lower-quality. Most are too-recent admissions, too-few-episodes-to-rate, or in another CMS-defined unrated state. The CMS technical documentation is the canonical reference for the algorithm, the measure weights, and the unrated-state definitions. Fonteum does not recompute the rating.
- 1.0 to 5.0 in 0.5 increments
- Built from Medicare claims + OASIS measures
- 64.2% of agencies are rated; 35.8% unrated
- Unrated ≠ low-quality (read CMS unrated-state definitions)
We cite, we don't rate.
Fonteum does not independently rate, inspect, verify, endorse, or guarantee any home-health agency. Anywhere this site cites a CMS rating, the rating is CMS's. We do not have an Fonteum rating for home-health. We do not run audits, on-site visits, or peer-comparison evaluations. We aggregate and present what CMS publishes, with the source attribution, last-checked date, and limitations CMS itself documents.
The platform's existing user reviews — which exist for other verticals — do not appear on home-health surfaces. CMS measure definitions and consumer reviews are different signal classes, and the §114 doctrine prohibits combining them in the same UI element on a home-health profile.
Eight CMS fields, all CMS-published.
When the home-health vertical launches, agency profile pages will display eight CMS-published fields:
- CMS Certification Number (CCN)
- CMS-registered provider name
- Address, city, state, ZIP, phone (CMS values are used for matching; consumer-facing display shows the platform's canonical address)
- Type of ownership (Proprietary / Non-Profit / Government Operated)
- Medicare/Medicaid certification date
- CMS quality-of-patient-care star rating (1.0–5.0)
- Service offerings (nursing, PT, OT, speech, medical-social, home-health-aide)
- Source line, last-checked date, and limitations sentence on every CMS-cited block
Detailed clinical measures stay research-only.
CMS publishes 13 process measures (timeliness of care, falls with major injury, skin-integrity changes, etc.) and three risk-standardized outcome clusters (Discharged to Community, Potentially Preventable Readmissions, Potentially Preventable Hospitalizations). These signals require statistical context — confidence intervals, denominator adequacy, risk-adjustment caveats — that does not fit a profile card without misreading.
These fields are write-locked: captured to provenance for traceability, but not rendered on profile pages until Fonteum's editorial review approves a framing that preserves CMS's published context. State-level aggregates of these measures appear on the /research surface only; they never attach to individual agency profiles.
Decisions about home-health care belong with clinicians.
This site is a published directory of CMS data. It is not a substitute for medical advice, clinical judgment, or care-planning conversations with a healthcare provider. Decisions about home-health care should be made with a doctor, discharge planner, or care navigator who knows the patient's specific situation. CMS ratings are one signal of agency quality; they are not a recommendation about what care any individual patient needs.
State-level findings live on the research hub.
Fonteum Research has published a state-level snapshot of CMS home-health data covering 12,392 agencies across 55 jurisdictions. The study cites the CMS dataset, mean star ratings by state, ownership mix, and limitations. Source-cited, downloadable as CSV, methodology open.
Read the study: Home Health Quality by State 2026.
The disclaimers we put in writing.
Fonteum does not independently rate, inspect, verify, endorse, or guarantee any home-health agency. CMS ratings cited on this site are CMS's, not Fonteum's. We do not own, manage, or moderate the CMS measure definitions; we cite them with source attribution and last-checked date.
The CMS quality-of-patient-care star rating is one signal of agency quality. Unrated agencies are not categorically lower-quality. State means are descriptive of a national publishing snapshot; they are not endorsements of any specific agency. Aggregate state averages do not attach to individual agency profiles. No paid-placement adjusts CMS-rating display order.
- Fonteum does not rate, inspect, verify, endorse, or guarantee any agency
- CMS ratings are CMS's, not Fonteum's
- Unrated ≠ low-quality
- Aggregate state data never attaches to agency profiles
- Paid placement does not adjust CMS-rating display
Related research and platform-wide methodology.
Compliance posture
We don’t sell ranking and don’t accept payment to move a provider up the list. For final hire decisions, verify licensing, insurance, and references directly with the applicable licensing or credentialing body.
No bulk-licensing source family is currently ingested for this vertical. Hire-time checking still routes through the body named above.