How to market the CMS High Performing Facility icon: the 7-surface rollout
A nursing home that earns the CMS High Performing Facility icon has about a quarter to make it count. The 7 surfaces to update, the exact wording that stays accurate, and the monitoring that keeps you out of trouble when the list refreshes.
A building earns the CMS High Performing Facility icon on September 30. By the time the next quarterly list posts, it has either turned the trophy into inquiries, tours, and referral conversations, or it hasn’t. Roughly 90 days.
Most operators will handle it one of two ways: a Facebook post the week it appears, or silence because nobody’s sure what they’re allowed to say. Here’s the third way: 7 surfaces, one sentence, and a monitor.
First, the sentence
Everything below uses the same line, so a family who sees the lobby piece, the website, and the Google listing reads one claim, in the same words, with the same date.
“Recognized by CMS as a High Performing Facility on Nursing Home Care Compare, as of October 2026.”
What it does: names the source (CMS), names the designation (High Performing Facility), names where a family can verify it (Care Compare), and dates it.
What to leave out: “award,” “top 12%,” “best,” “CMS-endorsed,” “5-star trophy.” The icon marks a building that cleared 11 quarterly checks. Say that, in plain English, in the sentence after the claim. Families trust the explanation more than the badge.
One more decision: leave the CMS trophy graphic where it is. The memo says nothing about facility use of the icon, which means the conservative call is yours to make, and a federal symbol on your brochure reads as endorsement. Design your own treatment that points to Care Compare instead. At MOZART&CO. we build one recognition mark per network and it carries across every surface below.
The 7 surfaces
1. The website. The facility page and the network page both get the sentence, the one-line explanation, and a link to the facility’s Care Compare profile so the family can check. If you run a multi-site architecture, the same module drops into every qualifying building’s page. Prestige Healthcare’s facility sites run on one system for exactly this reason: one identity, 16 websites, and one update reaches all of them.
2. Google Business Profile. Most families land here before your website. The sentence goes in the business description, a Google Post goes up with the date, and the team that answers reviews mentions it when relevant. If reviews are nobody’s job in your building, start there.
3. Social, per facility. One post per building account, on the building’s own feed, with a real photo of the team. A corporate account can announce the network number; the building account is where families and staff actually follow. The post says what the icon means and thanks the people who earned it by name. Per-facility social is how you make that happen across 12 buildings in the same week, and Lionstone ran a year of it across 35.
4. The lobby. A family standing in your entryway should be able to see it. A framed piece at reception, or a panel in the existing signage system, with the sentence and the date. Print with a date on it is print you’ll replace, which is the point.
5. Admissions. An insert in the packet and a line in the tour script: “CMS recognized us as a High Performing Facility this quarter. Here’s what that took.” The admissions director should be able to name 3 of the 11 checks without notes. That’s a tour conversation families remember.
6. Hospital partners. A one-page referral sheet for every discharge planner who sends you patients, delivered by hand where possible. This surface has the highest return of the 7 and gets its own piece: turning the icon into hospital referrals.
7. Current families. A letter or email from the administrator. Current families are your best referral source, and this hands them a specific, verifiable thing to say at Thanksgiving. Keep it human: what the recognition means, who earned it, and what stays the same about how you’ll treat their parent.
The 8th thing: the monitor
The icon stays “until the facility is no longer eligible.” The list rebuilds quarterly. CMS warns the state lists and Care Compare will drift apart on timing.
So before surface 1 goes live, someone owns the status. Every material above is logged with its location and date. Each quarter, Care Compare gets checked and the log gets confirmed. If a building drops off, the log is the removal checklist and the work takes an afternoon. The full plan is in when a nursing home loses the icon.
We track this in the Marketing Hub: each facility’s status, verification date, and the materials tied to it, flagged when anything changes.
Running it as a campaign
Seven surfaces across a dozen buildings in 7 days is a coordination problem, which is the problem MOZART&CO. exists to solve. Our CMS recognition campaign covers the wording, the recognition mark, the web and Google updates, per-facility social, lobby and admissions pieces, the referral sheet, the family letter, and the quarterly monitoring, as one launch for the buildings that qualified. For existing retainer clients, the digital layer usually fits inside current scope; print and expanded materials get quoted separately.
If a building of yours is on the list, inquire. The first week matters most, and it’s shorter than it sounds.
Frequently asked questions
- How should a nursing home announce the CMS High Performing Facility icon?
- With one dated sentence used on every surface: recognized by CMS as a High Performing Facility on Nursing Home Care Compare, as of October 2026. Add a plain-language line on what it took, then roll it across the website, Google Business Profile, per-facility social, the lobby, admissions materials, hospital referral partners, and current families in the same week.
- What wording is safe for the CMS icon?
- Name the source, the designation, where a family can verify it, and the date. Leave out award, top 12%, best, and CMS-endorsed. The icon marks a facility that cleared 11 quarterly checks, so say that in plain English right after the claim.
- Can we use the CMS trophy graphic in our own marketing?
- The CMS memo does not address it, so the conservative choice is to design your own recognition mark that points to Care Compare rather than reproducing a federal symbol, which can read as endorsement.
- How much does a recognition campaign cost?
- Scope follows facility count. A standalone launch for one building is smaller than the same 7 surfaces coordinated across 8 qualifying facilities in one week. For existing retainer clients the digital layer usually fits inside current scope, with print and expanded materials quoted separately.
- What if the facility loses the icon during the campaign?
- Every material is logged with its location and live date before launch, so removal is a checklist: digital down on day 1, hospital partners notified on day 2, print replaced on day 3. Claims written as dated facts stay true after removal.
Your rating is a revenue number.
Families read reviews before they ever call. A half-star difference in your rating changes how many tours you book, which makes reputation one of the most direct levers on census you have.