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CMS PBJCMS Payroll-Based Journal (PBJ) Daily Nurse Staffing
U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services · Tier-1 · research-only (never on individual profiles)
PBJ collects payroll-derived daily nurse-staffing hours for ~14,700 Medicare-certified nursing homes since 2016 (mandatory replacement for self-reported staffing surveys). RN, LPN, CNA hours per resident per day; weekend coverage; contract-staff share; midnight-census denominator. The federal 3.48 nurse-hour minimum was rescinded December 3, 2025; PBJ data continues to publish.
How this source shows up on Fonteum.
Sprint 1 LOCKED-7 #4 (per Council #8-a/b expansion). Drives the brand-hub `/staffing` editorial surface per master spec Page 7. Per-facility daily-granularity nurse-staffing — the only CMS dataset that exposes this layer at facility resolution.
What this source does NOT mean
Not real-time. PBJ is payroll-derived from facility submissions, with quarterly publication. Not a quality measure — higher hours correlate with better outcomes but are not deterministic.
Per-field display contract.
Every field below has a `display_allowed` flag in the §94 provenance schema. Write-locked fields are captured to provenance for audit but never rendered on profile pages.
Renders on profile
5 fieldsWhat we can’t infer from this source.
- Suppression for facilities reporting <90 days in a measure period — render `<DataAvailabilityState>` with explicit reason.
- Census denominator is midnight-only; rapid intra-day census shifts not visible.
- Federal 3.48 minimum rescinded December 3, 2025 (effective February 2, 2026); per-facility transparency now the only mechanism for staffing accountability.
Authority, license, refresh cadence.
Authority
U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
Tier
Tier-1 · research-only (never on individual profiles)
Refresh cadence
Quarterly (Q1/Q2/Q3/Q4 PBJ publication; daily-granularity per facility per day).
License
U.S. government public-domain works (17 U.S.C. § 105). Attribution required: 'Source: CMS Payroll-Based Journal · Snapshot {YYYY-MM-DD}'. License ↗
Attribution requirement
Source: CMS Payroll-Based Journal · Snapshot {YYYY-MM-DD}
What the source allows.
U.S. government public-domain works. PDC publishes the dataset at data.cms.gov/provider-data/topics/nursing-homes with explicit redistribution rights.
What a single field looks like in the graph.
A worked example. Every field surfaced from this source carries this shape of provenance line — source · last checked · display rule · confidence (when applicable).
Field
Per-facility RN HPRD (display)
Sample value
0.78 RN hours per resident per day · weekend 0.62 · contract-staff 18%
Provenance line
Source: CMS Payroll-Based Journal · Q2 2025 publication · Display rule: per-facility RN HPRD + weekend HPRD + contract-staff share render on /staffing module
- /sources → The full source library — every dataset Fonteum cites.
- /data-provenance → The provider graph — pipeline diagram, source-family clusters, field-level provenance examples, display rules.
- /methodology → Network-wide sourcing, refresh cadence, and corrections policy.
- /editorial-policy → Independence, sourcing, conflicts, corrections, retractions.
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.