F-Tag Reference Guide — All 303 CMS Deficiency Tags

F-Tags are the federal regulatory framework CMS uses to evaluate skilled nursing facility compliance. This reference covers all 303 F-Tags with 419,452 total citations analyzed from official CMS Health Deficiency data. Each F-Tag page includes severity breakdowns, top-cited states, frequently co-cited tags, and Plan of Correction guidance.

How to Read F-Tag Citations

Every citation on a CMS-2567 pairs an F-Tag with a scope-and-severity letter from A to L. Letters D through F indicate no actual harm with potential for more than minimal harm — the most common range. G through I indicate actual harm to residents. J through L are Immediate Jeopardy: findings where noncompliance caused or was likely to cause serious injury or death, triggering the fastest enforcement timelines and the largest penalties. The same tag can appear anywhere on this scale — an F689 supervision citation might be a level-D paperwork gap at one facility and a level-J elopement at another — which is why severity distribution per tag, shown on each tag's page, matters as much as raw citation counts.

Citation frequency is also heavily concentrated: the top 25 tags below account for the majority of all citations issued nationally. For facility teams, that concentration is actionable — audit programs built around the top tags in your state cover most of the realistic citation risk. For families, a facility's tags are a readable summary of what surveyors actually found in the building.

Top 25 Most-Cited F-Tags

  1. F-Tag F0880: Infection Prevention & Control — 23,352 citations
  2. F-Tag F0689: Free of Accident Hazards/Supervision/Devices — 21,405 citations
  3. F-Tag F0812: Food Procurement Store/Prepare/Serve-Sanitary — 19,893 citations
  4. F-Tag F0684: Quality of Care — 16,397 citations
  5. F-Tag F0656: Develop/Implement Comprehensive Care Plan — 14,820 citations
  6. F-Tag F0761: Label/Store Drugs and Biologicals — 13,378 citations
  7. F-Tag F0677: ADL Care Provided for Dependent Residents — 10,325 citations
  8. F-Tag F0695: Respiratory/Tracheostomy Care and Suctioning — 9,401 citations
  9. F-Tag F0550: Resident Rights/Exercise of Rights — 8,999 citations
  10. F-Tag F0609: Reporting of Alleged Violations — 8,932 citations
  11. F-Tag F0584: Safe/Clean/Comfortable/Homelike Environment — 8,840 citations
  12. F-Tag F0755: Pharmacy Services/Procedures/Pharmacist/Records — 8,756 citations
  13. F-Tag F0657: Care Plan Timing and Revision — 8,745 citations
  14. F-Tag F0686: Treatment/Services to Prevent/Heal Pressure Ulcers — 8,731 citations
  15. F-Tag F0600: Free from Abuse and Neglect — 8,671 citations
  16. F-Tag F0842: Resident Records-Identifiable Information — 8,039 citations
  17. F-Tag F0641: Accuracy of Assessments — 7,338 citations
  18. F-Tag F0658: Services Provided Meet Professional Standards — 6,892 citations
  19. F-Tag F0690: Bowel/Bladder Incontinence Catheter UTI — 6,296 citations
  20. F-Tag F0758: Psychotropic Drugs-PRN Use — 6,186 citations
  21. F-Tag F0580: Notify of Changes (Injury/Decline/Room etc.) — 6,045 citations
  22. F-Tag F0610: Investigate/Prevent/Correct Alleged Violations — 5,723 citations
  23. F-Tag F0692: Nutrition/Hydration Status Maintenance — 5,319 citations
  24. F-Tag F0759: Free of Medication Error Rates of 5% or More — 4,762 citations
  25. F-Tag F0760: Residents are Free of Significant Medication Errors — 4,755 citations

Compliance Resources

Explore POCDesk — Free Nursing Home Compliance Tools

Official Sources

POCDesk analyzes official government data. Verify any facility's record or read the underlying regulations at these primary sources: