CMS Home Health Star Ratings, Nationally
How CMS quality-of-patient-care stars are distributed across the nation's Medicare-certified home health agencies — and the large share of agencies CMS cannot rate at all, which is the first thing a family should understand.
What the national data shows
- Agencies analyzed
- 12,392
- Medicare-certified
- With a CMS star rating
- 64.2%
- 7,961 agencies
- Average star (rated)
- 3.25
- quality of patient care
- Limited-data agencies
- 25%
- no star, no measures
The national distribution of CMS home-health star ratings
CMS quality-of-patient-care star rating
How rated agencies spread across the CMS star scale, in the half-star steps CMS publishes.
View as a table
| Rating | Providers | Share |
|---|---|---|
| CMS quality star 5 | 458 | 3.7% |
| CMS quality star 4.5 | 1,041 | 8.4% |
| CMS quality star 4 | 1,287 | 10.4% |
| CMS quality star 3.5 | 1,338 | 10.8% |
| CMS quality star 3 | 1,347 | 10.9% |
| CMS quality star 2.5 | 963 | 7.8% |
| CMS quality star 2 | 778 | 6.3% |
| CMS quality star 1.5 | 593 | 4.8% |
| CMS quality star 1 | 156 | 1.3% |
| No star | 4,431 | 35.8% |
| Total | 12,392 | 100.0% |
Calculated across all 12,392 Medicare-certified home health agencies in this dataset. CMS publishes this rating in half-star increments and it is shown here without rounding. Agencies CMS does not rate are counted separately and never treated as zero.
CMS-reported data
The bigger story is what CMS does not rate
Coverage, not just the score, is the finding for home health.
For nursing homes, nearly every facility carries a CMS overall rating. Home health is different: a substantial share of agencies have no star rating, and 25% have no reported quality measures at all. CMS reports at least one quality measure for 9,296 agencies (75%). When you compare agencies, the practical first question is often not “how many stars?” but “does CMS report enough about this agency to compare it at all?” Our guide on comparing home health agencies covers how to work with limited data.
What services agencies offer
Service availability across agencies
How many agencies CMS lists as offering each service line.
CMS-reported data · updated 2026-08-21 · site-calculated context, not a CMS rating
Methodology
Limits of this analysis
What the public data can and cannot tell you.
These figures describe a dated CMS snapshot, not live conditions. A missing star or measure is a gap in CMS reporting, not evidence of poor care. Nothing here recommends any individual agency. Confirm the current record on Medicare’s Care Compare. See Methodology and Data updates.
The CMS Research Brief
New CMS data releases, Special Focus Facility changes, and each new analysis.
One email covering what changed in the public CMS record: dataset releases and what moved in them, additions to and departures from the Special Focus Facility list, and any new analysis published here. Written for people who work with this data. Roughly monthly.
I agree to receive the CMS Research Brief by email and understand I can unsubscribe at any time. Your address is stored only to send this brief. No health or care information is collected, nothing is shared with providers or advertisers, and SeniorCareRating.com does not sell or rent subscriber data.