People shopping for nursing home care can finally make the decision that suits them best because the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) unveiled an updated Web site Thursday intended to make choosing a nursing home easier for elderly Americans and their families. CMS today released quality ratings for each of the nation’s 15,800 nursing homes that participate in Medicare or Medicaid. Facilities are assigned star ratings from a low of one star to a high of five stars based on health inspection surveys, staffing information and quality of care measures.

Under the new system, five stars means a nursing home ranks "much above average," four star indicates "above average," three means "about average," two is "below average" with a one indicating "much below average." The rankings will be updated quarterly.

More than 1.5 million people live in the 15,000 U.S. nursing homes. But experts warn that the system could actually cause more confusion when trying to find the right facility for a patient's particular needs, increase the risk of lawsuits against nursing homes and unfairly disadvantage facilities that care for the frailest patients. However officials in the long-term-care industry say the rating system shouldn't be the only factor in making a decision. They say visiting facilities is important part of the decision-making process.

"In publishing the number of stars each nursing home has scored, we hope to not only help families, but to step up our encouragement of some poorly performing nursing homes to improve the quality of care they provide," said Kerry Weems, acting administrator of CMS.

About 12 percent of the nation’s nursing homes received a full five star rating while 22 percent scored at the low end with one star. The remaining 66 percent of facilities were distributed fairly evenly among the two, three and four star rankings.