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CMS Care Compare — HHCMS Care Compare — Home Health Care Agencies
U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services · Tier-1 · research-only (never on individual profiles)
The agency-level wide table for ~12,400 Medicare-certified Home Health Agencies. Identity (CCN, name, address, ownership) plus headline 'Quality of Patient Care' star rating per agency. Quality-of-patient-care star ratings are computed by CMS from OASIS-derived process and outcome measures. NPI is not in this dataset; the cross-source join engine bridges via NPPES Type 2 fuzzy match.
How this source shows up on Fonteum.
Identity backbone for Home Health Agencies (POS QIES does not cover HH). Drives the brand-hub `/care-compare/home-health` module. State-level rollups and per-agency pages ship in a follow-on wave.
What this source does NOT mean
This is not a directory of individual home-health workers — agencies, not aides. Star rating reflects the CMS-published Quality of Patient Care measure; Fonteum does not independently rate, score, or rank agencies.
Research and data questions this source supports.
- Build a state-level home health agency quality leaderboard using CMS Quality of Patient Care star ratings as the primary sort signal.
- Filter the 12,400+ home health agencies to a county or ZIP code to surface the agencies serving a specific referral catchment area.
- Cross-reference home health agency CCNs against the OIG LEIE to check for excluded agencies before network contracting.
- Support post-acute discharge planning by surfacing the nearest Medicare-certified home health agencies with star ratings above a quality threshold.
- Power a research study on home health quality variation by ownership type — comparing for-profit, non-profit, and government-owned agencies.
Dataset size: 12,392 agencies (May 2026 snapshot)
Per-field display contract.
Fields listed below show their configured `display_allowed` flag from the §94 provenance schema. Fields marked write-locked are captured for audit and are not rendered on profile pages.
Renders on profile
17 fieldsWhat we can’t infer from this source.
- CAHPS-style patient experience scores live in the separate HHCAHPS datasets (ccn4-8vby etc.); this snapshot does not include them. Suppression for <40 surveys still applies on those datasets per CMS methodology.
- Newly certified agencies have no Quality of Patient Care rating; render `<DataAvailabilityState>` with the explicit reason rather than implying low quality.
- Claims-based measures inherent ~12-month lag.
- Non-Medicare HHAs are excluded by definition.
Authority, license, publisher cadence.
Authority
U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
Tier
Tier-1 · research-only (never on individual profiles)
Publisher / configured cadence
Declared or configured cadence: Quarterly. Underlying signal from OASIS v3.0 + Medicare FFS claims (~12-month claims lag). Not evidence of the latest loaded source date.
License
U.S. government public-domain works (17 U.S.C. § 105). Attribution required: 'Source: CMS Care Compare · Home Health Care Agencies (6jpm-sxkc) · Snapshot {YYYY-MM-DD}'. License ↗
Official URL
Attribution requirement
Source: CMS Care Compare · Home Health Care Agencies (6jpm-sxkc) · Last checked {YYYY-MM-DD}
What the source allows.
U.S. government public-domain works. PDC publishes the dataset at data.cms.gov/provider-data/dataset/6jpm-sxkc with explicit redistribution rights. Attribution must include the dataset slug + snapshot date.
What a single field looks like in the graph.
This worked example shows the provenance shape used when a surfaced field has populated source, last-checked, display-rule, and confidence metadata. Individual fields may omit unavailable values.
Field
Quality of Patient Care star rating (snapshot 2026-05-07)
Sample value
12,392 agencies; 7,961 rated; mean 3.25 stars
Provenance line
Source: CMS Care Compare · Home Health Care Agencies (6jpm-sxkc) · Source-modified 2026-03-05 · Snapshot 2026-05-07 · Display rule: per-agency star rating renders on /care-compare/home-health module + per-agency pages
Official API, bulk download, and Fonteum endpoints.
Official API / download
Bulk download
Fonteum surface
Common questions about CMS Care Compare — HH.
- What is CMS Care Compare for Home Health agencies?
- CMS Care Compare — Home Health Care Agencies is a federal dataset of approximately 12,400 Medicare-certified home health agencies. It includes agency identity (CCN, name, address), ownership type, Medicare certification date, service offerings (nursing, PT, OT, speech, home health aide), and the CMS Quality of Patient Care star rating. The dataset is published in the CMS Provider Data Catalog.
- What does the Quality of Patient Care star rating measure?
- The Quality of Patient Care star rating is a 1–5 star summary measure computed by CMS from OASIS-derived process measures (e.g., timely initiation of care, patient education) and outcome measures (e.g., improvement in ambulation, hospital admission rate). CMS applies a clustering algorithm to the composite measure scores to assign star ratings. The rating reflects the agency's most recent 12 months of OASIS and claims data.
- Why do some home health agencies have no star rating?
- Newly certified agencies do not have a rating until they have accumulated sufficient OASIS data. Agencies with fewer than a minimum number of qualifying patients may have their ratings suppressed by CMS for statistical reliability. The dataset includes a footnote field explaining the specific reason for rating suppression in each case.
- How do I download the CMS home health agency data?
- The dataset is available from the CMS Provider Data Catalog as a CSV download. It is updated quarterly by CMS and is U.S. government public-domain data. Attribution must include the dataset ID and the snapshot date.
- Does a higher star rating mean a home health agency is safer?
- A higher Quality of Patient Care star rating indicates better performance on the CMS-defined measures for that rating period. It is a useful comparative signal but not a comprehensive safety assessment. Fonteum surfaces the CMS-published rating with full provenance and notes the measures included and the claims-data lag (approximately 12 months). Patient experience scores from HHCAHPS are in a separate dataset not currently in this surface.
Where this source already shows up.
Related sources in the graph
- /sources → The generated source-catalog subset — documented datasets Fonteum cites.
- /data-provenance → The provider graph — pipeline diagram, source-family clusters, field-level provenance examples, display rules.
- /methodology → Documented sourcing, publisher cadence, observed freshness, and corrections policy.
- /editorial-policy → Independence, sourcing, conflicts, corrections, retractions.