The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has released the quality ratings for all the 16,000 nursing homes across the United States which participate in Medicare or Medicaid.

According to health officials, the ratings system released by CMS was created in order to help patients, their families and caregivers to compare such facilities with less difficulty. Besides, in this way nursing homes will be challenged to enhance their quality of care, affirmed Kerry Weeks, acting administrator of CMS.

Under this system, every single nursing home is rated from a low of one star to a high of five stars based on three fields: quality measures, health inspection results and staffing levels.

Data informs that of nation’s Medicare- and Medicaid-certified nursing homes, 27 percent received a single star, in contrast with 13 percent of those not-for-profit. Whereas nineteen percent of non-profit such medical units were five-star, just 9 percent of for-profit units earned the highest rating.

As maintained by Charlene Herrington, professor emeritus of nursing at the University of California, San Francisco and member of Medicare’s technical advisory committee for the ratings, reports show “a lot of the for-profit homes have low staffing, and it shows up in their quality.”

Eric Carlson, director of the Long-Term Care Project for the National Senior Citizens Law Center admits the data is useful to consumers, but adds that it shouldn’t be taken "as the gospel truth."