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CMS nursing home ownership data, explained
CMS publishes ownership filings for nursing homes, home health agencies, hospices, hospitals, rural health clinics and FQHCs. They are free, public domain, and genuinely useful — once you know what they do and do not contain.
What is in the files
One row per owner per facility: organisation or individual, role code, association date, sometimes an ownership percentage, and a set of self-declared type flags — corporation, LLC, holding company, investment firm, private equity, REIT, chain home office, management services, medical staffing, for-profit, non-profit.
What is missing
Any key linking related entities. Any verification. Any indication of which owner actually runs the place. Ownership percentages are frequently blank. The private-equity flag is a checkbox the filer ticks themselves.
The suppression rule
CMS suppresses cells derived from ten or fewer beneficiaries in its utilisation files, with counter-suppression markers so the values cannot be recalculated. Ownership files are not suppressed this way, but any product built on CMS data should carry the suppression through rather than attempt to reconstruct it.
How often it updates
Roughly monthly, with a dated filename that changes each release. Anything hardcoding a file URL will break silently — which is why our pipeline re-resolves the current file from the CMS catalogue on every run.
Common questions
Is CMS ownership data free?
Yes. It is published under usa.gov/government-works — United States Government works, public domain, and free to use commercially.
How accurate is CMS ownership data?
It is accurate as a record of what providers filed. CMS does not verify it, and academic work has documented material gaps, particularly around private-equity ownership.