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F-Tag Citation Watch
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Method & sources

Source

All citation data comes from one public file: the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Provider Data Catalog dataset Health Deficiencies (dataset id r5ix-sfxw), file NH_HealthCitations_Oct2026.csv. CMS lists it as public; this release's data is as of 2026-10-01, it was released 2026-10-28, and CMS plans the next update for 2026-12-02. We downloaded it on 2026-11-01 with no account or API key. It is the same data CMS uses on Medicare.gov Care Compare.

The file holds 418,682 health citations (one row per F-tag cited at a nursing home in a standard or complaint survey). These pages use the 94,771 citations with a survey date from 2025-10-01 to 2026-09-30, at 11,462 facilities. The most recent survey in this release is dated 2026-09-23.

Terms

CMS states: "Works of the U.S. Government are in the public domain and you don't need permission to reuse them, but an attribution to the agency as the source is appreciated. Your materials, however, shouldn't give the false impression that the government's endorsing your commercial products or services. See 42 U.S.C 1320b-10." (About using government data). This site is not affiliated with or endorsed by CMS, HHS or any state survey agency.

How pages are built

  • State pages (52): every citation for that state in the window, broken down by F-tag.
  • F-tag pages (160): F-tags with at least 20 citations nationally, broken down by state. The full tag wording is CMS's own deficiency description. The short labels in titles come from CMS's "List of Revised F-Tags" (Federal Regulatory Groups for Long Term Care); where that title would not fit in a 60-character page title we condensed it by hand (36 tags), and F627/F628, which postdate that list, are labelled from CMS's regulation text.
  • F-tag by state pages (1067): combinations with at least 20 citations.

Counts are plain row counts. "Actual harm or worse" counts scope/severity letters G to L. Lists show the 50 most recent citations, with facility name, city and CCN as CMS publishes them. Nothing is estimated, scored or rewritten.

Limits

  • CMS publishes a survey only after the state survey agency uploads it, so the latest one or two months are incomplete and fill in over later releases.
  • A citation is the surveyors' finding; facilities can dispute it (through informal or independent dispute resolution), and in this file 94.5% have CMS status 'provider has date of correction' (97.7% have any correction date) out of 94,771 citations. A date of correction is reported by the provider and accepted by the survey agency; it is not a re-inspection. Meanwhile 1,422 have no plan of correction. Check Care Compare or the facility's CMS-2567 for the full statement of deficiencies.
  • CMS refreshes this dataset about monthly, so these pages and any future alert can be no fresher than CMS's release.
  • Fire-safety (life safety code) citations are a separate CMS dataset and are not included.

The alert

The emailed alert described on these pages does not exist yet. The waitlist and price question are there to measure whether people want it. Nothing is sold or charged. Contact: olsenindustries@mail.grokbot.com.