Nursing Home Compliance Benchmark by State
Benchmark skilled nursing facility compliance across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Each state benchmark draws on official CMS Health Deficiency data to compare average deficiency rates, the most-cited deficiency categories and F-Tags, Immediate Jeopardy frequency, and overall survey performance — so you can see how any state stacks up nationally.
Why State Benchmarks Matter
Nursing home survey enforcement varies dramatically by state. The same care practice that draws a level-D citation in one state may be cited at actual-harm level in another, and average deficiency counts per survey can differ by a factor of three between neighboring states. For administrators, knowing your state's baseline changes how you read your own survey results: eight deficiencies might be routine in one state and a red flag in another. For families comparing facilities across state lines — common in metropolitan areas that span borders — raw citation counts are misleading without the state context this benchmark provides.
What Each State Benchmark Includes
- Average deficiencies per certified facility, compared to the national average
- The state's most-cited F-Tags and deficiency categories
- Immediate Jeopardy citation frequency (severity J, K, and L findings)
- Correction rates — how reliably cited problems get fixed and verified
- Links to every facility's individual scorecard within the state
All figures are computed from the official CMS Health Deficiency dataset covering more than 14,000 Medicare-certified skilled nursing facilities and over 400,000 citations, refreshed as CMS publishes new survey data.
Related Compliance Tools
- SNF Scorecard & Inspection Results
- Best Nursing Homes by State
- State Compliance Guides
- F-Tag Reference Guide
Benchmark Compliance by State
- Alabama
- Alaska
- Arizona
- Arkansas
- California
- Colorado
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- District of Columbia
- Florida
- Georgia
- Hawaii
- Idaho
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Maine
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Mississippi
- Missouri
- Montana
- Nebraska
- Nevada
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- New Mexico
- New York
- North Carolina
- North Dakota
- Ohio
- Oklahoma
- Oregon
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- South Carolina
- South Dakota
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
- Vermont
- Virginia
- Washington
- West Virginia
- Wisconsin
- Wyoming
Explore POCDesk — Free Nursing Home Compliance Tools
- SNF Scorecard — look up any facility's inspection record
- Nursing Home Compare Tool — side-by-side comparisons
- Skilled Nursing Near Me — find facilities by city & state
- Best Nursing Homes by State — ranked by inspection results
- Survey Tracker — recent CMS survey activity
- F-Tag Reference Guide — every CMS deficiency tag
- Plan of Correction (POC) Complete Guide
- Free AI POC Generator
- Plan of Correction Examples
- CMS Survey Preparation Guide
- SNF Compliance Guides
- What Is Skilled Nursing Care?
Official Sources
POCDesk analyzes official government data. Verify any facility's record or read the underlying regulations at these primary sources:
- Medicare.gov Care Compare — CMS's official nursing home comparison tool
- CMS Provider Data Catalog — the raw nursing home inspection & deficiency datasets
- CMS Nursing Home Certification & Compliance — enforcement policy and the Special Focus Facility program
- 42 CFR Part 483 (eCFR) — the federal requirements of participation behind every F-Tag
- National Long-Term Care Ombudsman Resource Center — free advocacy help for residents and families