Care Compare
Care Compare is the Medicare.gov website where CMS publicly reports quality data for home health agencies and other provider types. For home health, it displays the Quality of Patient Care Star Rating, the Patient Survey Star Rating, and individual quality measure results drawn from OASIS assessments, Medicare claims, and HHCAHPS surveys.
What Care Compare shows for home health
Each Medicare-certified agency has a profile listing ownership and services alongside its quality data: the two star ratings, OASIS-based outcome and process measure results, claims-based utilization measures, and HHCAHPS patient experience scores, each shown against state and national averages. Care Compare replaced the older Home Health Compare site in late 2020, consolidating all provider types into one tool. The underlying data are also published in downloadable files through CMS's Provider Data Catalog, which is what referral platforms, Medicare Advantage plans, and benchmarking vendors ingest.
Where the data come from and how current they are
Care Compare is a lagging indicator by design. OASIS-based measures reflect a rolling window of assessments, claims-based measures reflect an even longer window because claims must be filed and processed, and HHCAHPS reflects four quarters of surveys. CMS refreshes the site quarterly, and agencies receive preview reports before each refresh through iQIES, the CMS quality reporting system. A problem you fix today will bleed out of the public numbers over several quarters, which is exactly why waiting for the public data to look bad is an expensive monitoring strategy.
Who is actually looking at your profile
Care Compare's audience is broader than patients:
- Hospital discharge planners and case managers screening post-acute partners
- E-referral platforms that surface ratings inside referral workflows
- Medicare Advantage plans and ACOs building preferred networks
- Competitors benchmarking against you
- Journalists and researchers using the downloadable files
For many of these users, the star ratings function as a pass/fail filter before a conversation ever happens.
How to manage your Care Compare presence
Review the preview report every quarter and reconcile it against your internal measure tracking before the refresh goes live; calculation disputes must be raised during the preview window. Verify that demographic and service information is accurate, since stale profile data undermines credibility with referrers. Most importantly, work backward from the public measures to the operational drivers, OASIS accuracy, timely starts of care, and hospitalization prevention, so the profile takes care of itself.
Frequently asked questions
How often is Care Compare updated?
CMS refreshes home health data quarterly. Because each measure uses a rolling data window, a single quarter of improved performance shifts the public numbers only partially, and full turnover of a measure can take a year or more.
Can an agency correct errors on Care Compare?
Agencies can review preview reports before each refresh and raise suspected calculation or data errors with CMS during the preview period. What agencies cannot do is change accurately calculated results retroactively, so the preview review should be a standing quarterly task.
Why does my agency show some measures but no star ratings?
Star ratings require minimum data volumes: enough qualifying episodes across enough measures for the Quality of Patient Care rating, and roughly 40 completed surveys for the Patient Survey rating. Agencies below those thresholds display available measure results without summary stars.