In a recent announcement, QSSAM-25-03-NH, CMS has indicated that they will be freezing the health inspection stars for the next two months.
It is important to note that this freeze is related to the transition of the CMS nursing home survey and certification data infrastructure from the legacy QIES system to the iQIES system and that the two-month freeze will allow for testing to occur to ensure a seamless integration and data integrity.
CMS reiterated that the regular quarterly update will occur in October.
That said, it’s important to remember that star ratings can update off the regular quarterly cycle for a few reasons related to health inspection data. See below for what the July 2025 5-Star user’s guide indicates.
This is not new. There are events that can occur that would cause a change to the weighted health inspection score, and these events can occur month to month.
What is happening for the next two months is that the “freeze” will stop the effect that these events will have on star ratings. This will only affect facilities who have one or more of these events occur that would affect their health inspection star rating in the next two months.
While changes will not be reflected on Care Compare for the next two months, CMS indicated in this memo that there are other methods for consumers to ascertain current health inspection data including, the mandated public display of survey data in each nursing home, FOIA requests, and contacting the state survey agencies directly.
Bottom line is that facilities should follow their own health inspection data for the next two months, so they won’t be surprised when the regular quarterly update to care compare occurs in October.
Since the cut-points between star categories for the health inspection rating are based on percentile distributions that are not fixed, those cut-points may vary slightly depending on the current nursing home distribution in the database. However, while the cut-points for the health inspection ratings may change from month to month, the rating for a given facility is held constant until there is a change in the weighted health inspection score for that nursing home.
Events that could change the health inspection score include:
• A new health inspection.
• New complaint deficiencies.
• New focused infection control survey deficiencies.
• A second, third, or fourth revisit.
• Resolution of Informal Dispute Resolutions (IDR) or Independent Informal Dispute Resolutions (IIDR) resulting in changes to the scope and/or severity of deficiencies.
• The “aging” of complaint and focused infection control survey deficiencies.
• If a nursing home newly qualifies for the abuse icon, the health inspection rating is capped at two stars, and this may cause a change in the overall rating.
Health inspection data will be included as soon as they become part of the CMS database. The timing for this can vary by state and depends on having the complete survey package for the State Survey Agency to upload to the national database. Additional inspection data may be added to the database at any time because of complaint investigations, outcomes of revisits, Informal Dispute Resolutions (IDR), or Independent Informal Dispute Resolutions (IIDR). These data may not be added in the same cycle as the standard inspection data.
