The size difference is the first thing in the data
The average Kansas nursing home had 50.5 residents on a given day. The national average was 86.0. Both come from the state averages file behind Care Compare, which the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services last changed on August 1, 2026[2]. A Kansas home is not a slightly smaller version of the American one. It is a different size of building holding a different number of people.
Staffing runs the other way. Kansas homes reported 4.06686 total nurse staffing hours per resident per day against a national 3.86139, and nursing staff turnover of 48.1 percent against a national 45.8 percent[2]. CMS publishes the reporting periods behind those two measures in a separate file: staffing levels cover January 1 to March 31, 2026, and staff turnover covers January 1 to December 31, 2025[3].
296 homes, 18,044 beds, and the boundary of that count
The federal Provider Information file, filtered to Kansas, holds 296 rows, one for each nursing home certified to bill Medicare or Medicaid, and the query interface returns 296 as its own count of matching records. Their certified bed counts sum to 18,044. That sum is arithmetic performed over the per-home column in the file as it stood on August 1, 2026, not a total the agency published[1].
The homes run from 10 certified beds to 222. Of the 296, 264 are certified for both programs, 28 for Medicaid alone and 4 for Medicare alone. They sit in 94 of the 105 Kansas counties, which leaves 11 counties with no certified nursing home at all[1].
The file also carries an urban flag. On it, 157 of the 296 Kansas homes are flagged as not urban and hold 7,819 certified beds between them, while the 139 flagged urban hold 10,225[1]. The flag splits the buildings one way and the beds the other, so any statement about Kansas capacity is a different statement depending on which of the two it is counting.
| Measure | Kansas | United States |
|---|---|---|
| Average residents per day | 50.5 | 86.0 |
| Health deficiencies, most recent inspection cycle | 9.5 | 9.3 |
| Total nurse staffing hours per resident per day | 4.06686 | 3.86139 |
| Nursing staff turnover, calendar 2025 | 48.1 percent | 45.8 percent |
| Fines per home | 1.1 | 0.9 |
| Average fine amount | $20,603 | $31,093 |
A license is a wider thing than a certificate
Kansas has no license category called a nursing home. It licenses adult care homes, and K.S.A. 39-923 defines that term to take in nursing facilities, nursing facilities for mental health, intermediate care facilities for people with intellectual disability, assisted living facilities, residential healthcare facilities, home plus residences, boarding care homes and adult day care facilities. All of them, the statute says, are required to be licensed by the secretary for aging and disability services[4]. The same section defines a nursing facility narrowly, as a place operating 24 hours a day and seven days a week for six or more unrelated people who need skilled nursing care because of functional impairments.
K.S.A. 39-925 puts the administration of the adult care home licensure act with that secretary as the licensing agency, working with the state fire marshal and drawing on county, city-county and multicounty health departments and local fire and safety authorities. The same section refers throughout to the adult care home survey, certification and licensing programs as one set of functions[5].
That is why 296 is not the number of Kansas nursing homes in the ordinary sense. It is the number certified to bill two federal programs. A home that bills neither still needs a state license and is absent from the federal file entirely.
Closures, and what it would take to count them
The federal certification file is a snapshot. For each home standing on the day it was refreshed it records the date that home was first approved for Medicare and Medicaid, and it records nothing at all about homes that are no longer there[1]. A closure count cannot be derived from it, and a difference between two snapshots would count decertifications and changes of owner as closures alongside genuine ones.
The number of licensed adult care homes in Kansas, and the number that have shut in any given period, are the licensing agency’s to publish[5]. This publication has not obtained that list, and the third figure in the strip above reads "not published" rather than carrying a number from a file that answers a different question.
Who inspects, on what interval, and under which rule
Federal certification surveys in Kansas are not carried out by federal staff. Under 42 CFR 488.11, in the title 42 edition revised as of October 1, 2025, state and local agencies holding agreements under section 1864(a) of the Social Security Act conduct the surveys, run validation surveys of deemed status providers, and certify their findings to the federal agency[6]. In Kansas those functions sit with the same secretary who issues the license[5], which is the practical reason the state list and the federal list are two views of one inspection program.
The interval is set by 42 CFR 488.308, in the same October 1, 2025 edition. A standard survey of each skilled nursing facility and nursing facility must happen no later than 15 months after the last day of the previous standard survey, and the statewide average interval must be 12 months or less, computed at the end of each federal fiscal year across every participating facility[7]. The same section requires the survey agency to review every complaint allegation and to survey where its review concludes that only a survey can establish whether a deficiency exists. It also allows a survey within 60 days of a change of owner, of management firm, of administrator or of director of nursing.
What that program found is in the state averages file. Kansas homes averaged 9.5 health deficiencies in their most recent standard inspection cycle against a national 9.3, and averaged 1.1 fines per home at an average of $20,603 against a national 0.9 fines at $31,093, on the file as it stood on August 1, 2026[2].
Who owns them
Tallying the ownership column of the same file gives 174 Kansas homes in for-profit hands, made up of 85 limited liability companies, 80 corporations, 6 partnerships and 3 individuals. Another 103 are non-profit: 81 corporations, 14 recorded as other non-profit and 8 church related. Nineteen are government owned, and the largest group of those is the seven run by hospital districts, followed by five county homes, three city homes, two run jointly by a city and a county and two run by the state[1]. Each of those counts is a tally over the 296 rows rather than a figure the agency stated.
The seven run by hospital districts are the rows that tie this page to the rural care section, because a hospital district running a nursing home is one governing body operating two kinds of facility. The rural pieces take the hospital side of that, and both sections are indexed on the front page.