Five-Star

The nation's first nursing home rating system is an important tool for consumers, but changes can be expected, said the country's highest health official on Tuesday. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said criticism about always assigning certain percentages of facilities "excellent" or "failing" grades is "serious" and deserves further consideration.

Nursing home operators can get a look at their newly updated quality ratings in the federal government database starting Tuesday. Operators can access their facility's individualized report from the Minimum Data Set State Welcome pages on the state servers used for MDS data submission.