Comparison
Tru-Optic vs. CMS Care Compare
Care Compare is a great free tool for families choosing care. But if facility research is part of your job, you'll hit its limits fast. Here's the honest breakdown.
| CMS Care Compare | Tru-Optic | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | $25/mo after a 14-day free trial |
| Built for | Families choosing care | Consultants, investors, operators & compliance teams |
| Star ratings, inspections & staffing | Yes | Yes — 60+ CMS metrics per facility |
| Facility P&L financials | — | Full P&L from cost report filings |
| Side-by-side comparison | A few facilities at a time | Facilities, chains & owners, with best/worst highlighting |
| Map search | Basic location search | Radius search, rating-colored pins, hospital overlays |
| Ownership intelligence | Raw ownership records | Chain & owner rollups, kept current by the community |
| Custom tags & private notes | — | Yes |
| CSV export of filtered views | — | One-click |
| Route planning for site visits | — | Built in |
Same public data. Different job.
Both tools start from CMS data. The difference is everything built on top of it.
No financials
Care Compare tells you about care quality, but nothing about the business. Tru-Optic turns every facility's cost report into a readable P&L — revenue, payer rates, salaries, and overhead, benchmarked against state medians.
No research workflow
There's no way to tag facilities, keep notes, save views, or export a filtered list. Tru-Optic is built around that workflow, so your research accumulates instead of starting over each session.
Ownership is buried
Care Compare shows raw ownership records, but chain affiliations and recent acquisitions are hard to piece together. Tru-Optic rolls facilities up to chains and owners — and the community keeps it current when filings lag.
Choosing care for a family member? Care Compare is free, and we recommend it for that. Tru-Optic is for people who research facilities professionally — all 14,700+ of them, with the financial and ownership context Care Compare doesn't show. Try it free for 14 days.
See every facility. Know every number.
14,700+ facilities. 60+ CMS metrics. Full P&L financials. Search, analyze, and monitor every nursing home in America.
Then $25/mo · No contracts · Cancel anytime