The CMS overall star rating gives a hospital 1 to 5 stars. It is a summary of measures that CMS already publishes on its Care Compare site, so it is worth knowing what it is built from before leaning on it.
What the rating is built from
CMS sorts the measures behind the rating into five groups. In the file released Jul 22, 2026, the groups and the number of measures CMS lists in each are:
| Mortality | 8 measures |
|---|---|
| Safety of care | 8 measures |
| Readmission | 11 measures |
| Patient experience | 15 measures |
| Timely and effective care | 10 measures |
Hospitals do not all report every measure. Each hospital page on this site shows how many measures in each group CMS reported for that hospital. For mortality, safety of care and readmission, CMS also says how many of those measures were better than, no different from, or worse than the national rate. Across all hospitals in this file, 82% of these comparisons are "no different" (6,732 better, 50,953 no different, 4,422 worse). CMS marks a result better or worse only when the difference from the national rate is statistically clear, so "no different" is the common case.
Why some hospitals have no rating
A hospital needs enough data to be rated. A hospital gets a rating only if it reports at least three measures in at least three of the five groups, and one of those groups is mortality or safety of care. We checked this rule against the Jul 22, 2026 file: all 3,174 rated hospitals meet it, and none of the 1,340 hospitals marked with footnote 16 do.
Hospitals can also be left out for other reasons, each with its own footnote: some do not take part in the CMS reporting programs the rating draws on, and Department of Defense hospitals are not rated. The table shows how this plays out in the pilot states.
| State | CMS hospital type | Hospitals | With a rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Texas | Acute Care - Department of Defense | 3 | 0 |
| Texas | Acute Care - Veterans Administration | 5 | 5 |
| Texas | Acute Care Hospitals | 285 | 200 |
| Texas | Childrens | 16 | 0 |
| Texas | Critical Access Hospitals | 93 | 11 |
| Texas | Long-term | 1 | 0 |
| Texas | Psychiatric | 60 | 0 |
| Texas | Rural Emergency Hospital | 4 | 0 |
| Florida | Acute Care - Department of Defense | 2 | 0 |
| Florida | Acute Care - Veterans Administration | 7 | 6 |
| Florida | Acute Care Hospitals | 167 | 159 |
| Florida | Childrens | 3 | 0 |
| Florida | Critical Access Hospitals | 12 | 3 |
| Florida | Psychiatric | 30 | 0 |
A missing rating is not a low rating. It means CMS did not have what it needs to calculate one.
How to use the stars
- Compare like with like. A small critical access hospital and a large teaching hospital do different work. The hospital type is on every page.
- Look under the summary. Two hospitals with 3 stars can get there in different ways. The measure groups show where a hospital was better or worse than the national rate.
- Check the dates. Measures cover past periods, often a year or more before the release date. The patient survey results in this release, for example, cover Oct 1, 2024 to Sep 30, 2025.
- Think about the service you need. The overall rating is about the hospital as a whole. It does not tell you how one department or one surgeon performs.
- Talk to your doctor. Your doctor knows your condition, your insurance network and which hospitals they work with.
The patient survey is separate
The patient survey star rating comes from HCAHPS, a national survey of recent inpatients about things like communication with nurses and doctors, cleanliness and quietness. It is one of the inputs to the patient experience group, but CMS also publishes it on its own, and this site shows it in its own section. A hospital page also shows how many surveys were completed and the response rate, because a result based on few surveys is less reliable.
Where this comes from
The overall rating, measure counts and footnotes on this site come from the CMS Hospital General Information file; the survey results come from the CMS Patient survey (HCAHPS) - Hospital file. CMS publishes the full rating methodology on QualityNet. See About this data for dataset details and footnote codes.