Nursing Home Change of Ownership (CMS SNF CHOW) Scraper

Pulls every Medicare skilled nursing facility change of ownership (CHOW) since 1 January 2016 into clean JSON records with both sides of the deal in one row: the buyer's and the seller's legal business name, doing-business-as name, CMS Certification Number, NPI, PECOS Associate ID, enrollment state and provider type, plus the CHOW type and the effective date. Filter by state, effective-date range, buyer or seller name, or CCN.

CMS publishes this as a quarterly file behind a JSON API with upper-case, space-and-hyphen column names. 5,227 nursing home ownership transfers were published on 2026-08-23. A CHOW filing is a buying signal that shows up in a federal file before it shows up anywhere else: the operator has already closed, and the new owner is about to re-paper insurance, staffing, IT, food service, therapy contracts and debt.

Who uses this data

• SNF M&A brokers and buy-side teams watching who is acquiring in a state, at what pace, and who the repeat consolidators are (buyerPecosAssociateId groups a buyer's deals; the busiest buyer in the live file has 89).
• Nursing home lenders, REITs and underwriters who need the ownership history behind a CCN before they price a facility.
• LTC vendors and competitor BD teams working new-owner transition windows, where incumbent contracts are actually up for review.
• Elder-law firms establishing who owned a facility on a given date.
• Researchers, journalists and state regulators studying consolidation, private-equity roll-ups, and the shift of county-run homes into private hands.

What you get

One dataset item per ownership transfer. This is a real record from the live file, trimmed of nothing:

{
  "source": "https://data.cms.gov/data-api/v1/dataset/f557a6ed-95b3-4a22-8433-4175db2dec1c/data",
  "attribution": "Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)",
  "id": "O20260323002425|O20111206000434|2026-02-01",
  "effectiveDate": "2026-02-01",
  "chowTypeCode": "CH",
  "chowType": "CHANGE OF OWNERSHIP",
  "buyerOrganizationName": "GALENA HEALTHCARE LLC",
  "buyerDoingBusinessAsName": "TIMBER RIDGE HEALTH AND REHABILITATION",
  "buyerEnrollmentId": "O20260323002425",
  "buyerState": "WI",
  "buyerCcn": "525611",
  "buyerNpi": "1861365041",
  "buyerHasMultipleNpis": false,
  "buyerPecosAssociateId": "0648754119",
  "buyerProviderTypeCode": "00-18",
  "buyerProviderType": "PART A PROVIDER - SKILLED NURSING FACILITY",
  "buyerNpiLookupUrl": "https://npiregistry.cms.hhs.gov/provider-view/1861365041",
  "sellerOrganizationName": "COUNTY OF PORTAGE",
  "sellerDoingBusinessAsName": "PORTAGE COUNTY HEALTH CARE CENTER",
  "sellerEnrollmentId": "O20111206000434",
  "sellerState": "WI",
  "sellerCcn": "525611",
  "sellerNpi": "1003819491",
  "sellerHasMultipleNpis": false,
  "sellerPecosAssociateId": "7416843388",
  "sellerProviderTypeCode": "00-18",
  "sellerProviderType": "PART A PROVIDER - SKILLED NURSING FACILITY",
  "sellerNpiLookupUrl": "https://npiregistry.cms.hhs.gov/provider-view/1003819491",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-08-23T11:38:11.449Z"
}

id is the natural key of a transfer, buyerEnrollmentId|sellerEnrollmentId|effectiveDate, which was verified unique across all 5,227 live rows. chowTypeCode is CH (change of ownership), AM (acquisition/merger) or CO (consolidation) per the CMS reference table. effectiveDate is an ISO 8601 calendar date; the source publishes no time of day, so none is invented. Blank source cells arrive as null, never as empty strings, and buyerHasMultipleNpis / sellerHasMultipleNpis are true/false/null rather than "Y"/"N". The two *NpiLookupUrl fields are constructed from the NPI and point at the NPPES registry; they are null when the source has no NPI. A run summary with row counts, request count and the delivered total is written to the OUTPUT key.

Input

Everything is optional. Run it with no input and you get the 100 most recent transfers.

Field	Type	Default	Notes
state	string	-	Two-letter code, e.g. TX. Matches when either side is enrolled there.
effectiveDateFrom	ISO date	-	Effective date on or after this day. Data starts at 2016-01-01.
effectiveDateTo	ISO date	-	Effective date on or before this day.
buyerKeyword	string	-	Case-insensitive substring over the buyer's legal name and DBA name.
sellerKeyword	string	-	Case-insensitive substring over the seller's legal name and DBA name.
ccn	string	-	Exact CMS Certification Number, matched on either side. The usual way to follow one facility through its ownership history.
maxResults	integer	100	1 to 10000. This is your cost cap: you pay per delivered record.
includeRaw	boolean	false	Attach a raw object with the source columns under their CMS names.

Filters combine with AND. Records are ordered newest effective date first, so maxResults always gives you the most recent transfers.

Example inputs

Recent nursing home sales in one state (broker deal flow, vendor transition prospecting):

{
  "state": "TX",
  "effectiveDateFrom": "2025-01-01",
  "maxResults": 200
}

Ownership history of one facility (lender or underwriter diligence):

{
  "ccn": "525611",
  "maxResults": 50
}

Every acquisition by one buyer (tracking a consolidator):

{
  "buyerKeyword": "Galena",
  "maxResults": 200
}

Pricing

$0.05 per record; you pay only for records delivered. One charge per dataset item, nothing else. Set maxResults and you have set your bill: 100 records is $5.00. Filters are applied before delivery, so a narrow search costs less than a broad one, and a search that matches nothing costs nothing.

Data source, refresh and licence

Data comes from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), from the "Skilled Nursing Facility Change of Ownership" dataset on data.cms.gov:

• Dataset landing page: Skilled Nursing Facility Change of Ownership
• API read by this Actor: https://data.cms.gov/data-api/v1/dataset/f557a6ed-95b3-4a22-8433-4175db2dec1c/data
• Data dictionary: SNF_CHOW_Data_Dictionary.pdf. Data guidance: SNF_CHOW_Data_Guidance.pdf

Refresh: CMS publishes this dataset quarterly (accrualPeriodicity: R/P3M in the catalogue). The snapshot read on 2026-08-23 was last modified 2026-07-27 and covered the quarter ending 2026-06-30. Filings also lag their own effective dates: on that snapshot the newest effective date present was 2026-02-01. Schedule the Actor quarterly and you track the publisher's own cadence; running it daily will not produce fresher data.

Licence: CMS's own catalogue entry (data.cms.gov/data.json) records this dataset as accessLevel: public, accessRights: Open, under the licence https://www.usa.gov/government-works.

Attribution: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). This Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

https://data.cms.gov/robots.txt allows the /data-api/v1/dataset/... path this Actor reads and publishes crawl-delay: 10. A normal run makes exactly ONE request, so the delay rarely applies; it is honoured before any additional page. The Actor sends a descriptive User-Agent (jserle-apify-actor/snf-change-of-ownership-tracker), opens no parallel connections, and caches nothing between runs.

Limitations

• No addresses, no purchase price, no facility bed count. The file carries 23 columns and none of them is a street address or a deal value. The *NpiLookupUrl fields let you resolve a party's address through the separate NPPES registry.
• Organizations only, not the people behind them. For the individual and organizational owners disclosed on an enrollment, CMS publishes a separate SNF Change of Ownership - Owner Information dataset, which this Actor does not read.
• One NPI per party. Where a party holds several NPIs, CMS shows one and sets the multiple-NPI flag; the data dictionary states the rest are published in a separate Additional NPIs file. The flag is delivered so you know when to look further.
• SNF buyers, mixed sellers. Every buyer in the live file is enrolled as a skilled nursing facility, but a handful of sellers are not (critical access hospital, FQHC, rural health clinic and others). Both provider types are delivered so you can tell.
• Skilled nursing facilities only. Hospital ownership changes are a different CMS dataset and are not included here.
• Fields are as published. CMS leaves the doing-business-as name blank on a meaningful minority of rows (432 buyers and 558 sellers of 5,227 on 2026-08-23). Those arrive as null.
• The run fails rather than half-succeeds. Every run reads the whole dataset and applies your filters locally, so an upstream change can never quietly hand you a short result. If the API stops returning JSON rows, returns an implausibly small unfiltered result, changes its column set in either direction on any row, cuts the read short, or normalizes to zero records on an unfiltered run, the run exits non-zero having pushed nothing and charged nothing. A filter that legitimately matches no transfer is a clean, free, empty run instead.

FAQ

How do I find out who owns a nursing home, or who bought it?

Run with the facility's ccn. Every transfer CMS has recorded for that CCN since 2016 comes back newest first, with the buyer's and seller's legal names, DBA names, NPIs and PECOS IDs on each row. The buyer on the newest row is the most recent owner CMS has recorded in this file.

What is a CHOW in Medicare terms?

A change of ownership of a Medicare-enrolled provider, reported to CMS through PECOS. chowTypeCode is CH for a change of ownership, AM for an acquisition or merger, or CO for a consolidation.

How do I track nursing home acquisitions by state?

Set state and an effectiveDateFrom. The state filter matches when either the buyer or the seller is enrolled there, so a cross-state acquirer still shows up.

Does the data include the purchase price or the facility address?

No. CMS publishes neither. Use the *NpiLookupUrl links to resolve an address through the NPPES registry.

How current is the nursing home change of ownership data?

CMS publishes quarterly. The snapshot read on 2026-08-23 was last modified 2026-07-27, and its newest effective date was 2026-02-01, so filings lag their effective dates by months.

Does it cover hospitals or home health agencies?

No. This is the skilled nursing facility file only. Hospital ownership changes are a separate CMS dataset.

Related datasets

Other datasets by the same author, all pay-per-record with source, refresh cadence and licence stated on each listing:

Nursing home and long-term care data

• Nursing Home Deficiency Citations (CMS) Scraper
• Nursing Home Fines & Civil Money Penalties (CMS) Scraper
• Nursing Home Directory & Ownership (CMS Form 671) Scraper
• Nursing Home Daily Nurse Staffing (CMS PBJ) Scraper
• New York Nursing Home Bed Availability (NYSDOH) Scraper

Medicare provider enrollment data

• Medicare Revoked Providers List (CMS Revocations) Scraper
• Medicare Opt-Out Providers List (CMS Affidavits) Scraper
• Medicare Revalidation Due Date List (CMS) Scraper

Public procurement and RFP feeds

• E-Rate Form 470 RFP Scraper (USAC School & Library Bids)
• NYC PASSPort Procurement Scraper (RFPs, Bids & Contracts)

Developer and AI test data

• Synthetic Invoice OCR Ground Truth Dataset Generator