Oklahoma nursing home abuse statistics

Oklahoma has 283 nursing homes certified by Medicare and Medicaid. Federal inspectors issued 191 citations at the immediate jeopardy level, the most serious finding available, and 504 citations for abuse, neglect, or exploitation. Twenty-seven Oklahoma facilities currently carry the abuse warning icon that CMS displays publicly on Care Compare.

How many nursing homes are in Oklahoma?

There are 283 CMS-certified nursing homes in Oklahoma, with 27,475 certified beds. On an average day these facilities care for roughly 17,259 residents. The largest concentrations are in Oklahoma County (40 facilities) and Tulsa County (33).

How many Oklahoma nursing homes have been cited for abuse?

Federal inspectors issued 504 citations to Oklahoma nursing homes under the category CMS calls Freedom from Abuse, Neglect, and Exploitation. Separately, 27 facilities, about 9.5 percent of the state total, currently display the abuse icon on Care Compare. CMS applies that icon when a facility has been cited for abuse that caused harm, or for abuse that could have caused harm, within a recent inspection window. Nationally, 1,435 of 14,693 facilities carry the icon, or about 9.8 percent, so Oklahoma sits very close to the national rate.

What is an immediate jeopardy citation?

Immediate jeopardy is the most serious finding a federal nursing home inspector can make. It means the facility's failure has caused, or is likely to cause, serious injury, harm, impairment, or death to a resident. A facility cited at this level must correct the problem immediately, and CMS can impose fines or halt Medicare and Medicaid payments.

Oklahoma facilities received 191 immediate jeopardy citations across the inspection records published in July 2026, including 157 within the most recent three years.

The CMS scope and severity grid

Every citation gets one letter, A through L. The letter encodes two things at once: how serious the problem was, and how many residents it reached. Letters G and above mean harm actually occurred. Letters J, K, and L mean immediate jeopardy.

How serious are Oklahoma's nursing home citations?

Of the 6,416 health citations issued to Oklahoma nursing homes in the published record, 315 were at the actual harm level or higher. The breakdown below shows how those citations distribute across the severity scale.

What are Oklahoma nursing homes cited for most often?

The single largest category is quality of life and care, followed by resident assessment and care planning. Abuse, neglect, and exploitation is the sixth most common category, with 504 citations.

What is a Special Focus Facility?

CMS maintains a list of nursing homes with a persistent record of poor performance. These facilities are inspected twice as often as others and face escalating penalties if they do not improve. Oklahoma currently has two designated Special Focus Facilities and ten facilities on the candidate list, meaning CMS has identified them as among the state's poorest performers but has not yet given them the formal designation.

How do I check a specific Oklahoma nursing home?

CMS publishes an inspection record for every certified facility at Medicare's Care Compare site. You can look up star ratings, staffing hours, the date of the last inspection, every citation issued, and any fines. The underlying data files are also published in full at the CMS Provider Data Catalog and are free to download.

If you are trying to understand what a specific citation meant for your family member, the inspector's written report for that survey is a public record.

Common questions

Does a low star rating mean a nursing home is unsafe?

Not by itself. The overall star rating combines inspection results, staffing levels, and quality measures, and the health inspection portion is graded on a curve within each state. A one-star facility in Oklahoma is being compared to other Oklahoma facilities, not to the national field. The rating is a starting point for questions, not a conclusion.

How often are Oklahoma nursing homes inspected?

Every certified nursing home receives a standard comprehensive inspection roughly once every nine to fifteen months. Additional inspections happen when someone files a complaint. Complaint inspections are noted separately in the CMS data, and citations arising from them are flagged as complaint deficiencies.

What is nurse staffing turnover and why does it matter?

Turnover measures the percentage of nursing staff who left the facility over a year. High turnover is associated with less continuity of care, because staff who do not know a resident are less likely to notice a change in that resident's condition. CMS publishes a turnover figure for each facility.

Are these citations proof that abuse happened?

A citation is a finding by a state or federal surveyor that a facility failed to meet a federal requirement. It is an official record of what inspectors found on a particular date. Whether a specific resident was harmed, and whether anyone is legally responsible, are separate questions that depend on that resident's own medical records and circumstances.

See also: Tulsa County nursing home inspection records, with facility-level detail for the Tulsa metro.

Data sources. All figures on this page come from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Provider Data Catalog, nursing homes theme, July 2026 release, specifically the Provider Information and Health Deficiencies files. CMS data is in the public domain. Figures reflect inspections completed and published as of the July 2026 refresh and will change as CMS publishes new surveys. Facility counts exclude facilities that were not certified as of that release. Two Oklahoma facilities had no overall star rating published, so rating percentages are calculated on the 281 facilities that did.