Anyone who reads Florida nursing home and ALF inspection reports for a living gets fluent in CMS Form 2567 fast. Anyone who only reads them occasionally — placement agents, family members, board members reviewing a portfolio — usually doesn't.
The 2567 is dense. It is also predictable. Once you know the structure, ten minutes is enough to take a clear position on a building.
What the 2567 actually is
The CMS Form 2567 (sometimes called the "Statement of Deficiencies") is the document AHCA surveyors generate after every standard or complaint survey of a nursing home. It lists each deficiency cited, the regulatory tag (F-tag), the surveyors' narrative findings, and the facility's plan of correction.
Florida ALFs use the AHCA Form 3120 series, which is structured similarly but uses different tag numbers and references Florida Statutes Chapter 429 and Rule 59A-36 instead of federal F-tags.
For SNFs, almost everything below applies directly. For ALFs, the principles transfer but the tag system is state-specific.
The structure of a 2567
A typical 2567 has, in order:
- A cover summary listing each F-tag cited, its scope/severity letter (A through L), and a short caption.
- Per-tag narrative sections. Each section opens with the F-tag and the regulatory text, then lays out surveyor findings — interviews, record reviews, observations — and concludes with the deficiency statement.
- The facility's Plan of Correction (POC), keyed to the same F-tags, describing what they'll do, by when, and how they'll monitor.
Read the cover summary first. It tells you the shape of the survey before you spend time on narratives.
Scope and severity — the grid that matters most
CMS classifies every deficiency on a two-axis grid. Scope is how widespread the issue is (Isolated / Pattern / Widespread). Severity is how harmful (No Actual Harm with potential for Minimal Harm / No Actual Harm with potential for More Than Minimal Harm / Actual Harm / Immediate Jeopardy).
The grid is encoded as a single letter, A through L:
| Isolated | Pattern | Widespread | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Immediate Jeopardy | J | K | L |
| Actual Harm | G | H | I |
| Potential for More Than Minimal Harm | D | E | F |
| Potential for Minimal Harm | A | B | C |
A few things to know:
- A through C are administrative — paperwork issues with no patient impact. These don't generate civil money penalties and don't move the Five-Star.
- D through F are the most common citations. They reflect a real gap but no documented harm yet. A building can have several D-level tags and still be a strong building.
- G and above are where you slow down. Actual harm was documented to a real resident. One G in a survey is meaningful. A pattern of Gs (or any H, I, J, K, L) is a serious concern.
- J, K, L are Immediate Jeopardy — surveyors found a situation likely to cause serious injury, harm, or death if not corrected immediately. These trigger expedited correction timelines and substantial penalties.
The Five-Star Health Inspection score weights deficiencies roughly by this grid: high-scope/high-severity tags cost many more points than A–C tags. So a building with twelve A-level paperwork tags can rate higher than a building with two G-level tags.
F-tags worth recognizing on sight
There are roughly 200 F-tags. A handful keep showing up and are worth memorizing:
- F600 / F602 / F603 / F604 — abuse, neglect, exploitation. Almost always serious.
- F684 — quality of care. Broad bucket; often paired with a specific clinical issue.
- F689 — accidents and supervision. Falls, elopement, scalds. Frequent and meaningful.
- F686 — pressure ulcers / skin integrity.
- F758 — unnecessary psychotropic medications. Connects to antipsychotic use rates in QM.
- F812 / F880 — food safety, infection control. Common and usually low-severity, but a string of these signals operational drift.
- F725 / F726 / F727 — sufficient and competent nursing staff. When citation patterns include these alongside clinical tags, the staffing thesis writes itself.
When you read a survey, scan the cover summary for any of these in the G-or-above range. That's the first signal.
Reading the narrative
Each per-tag section reads like a mini case file. Surveyors document what they observed, who they interviewed, what records they reviewed. The structure is:
- The regulation (federal CFR text).
- "Based on observation, interview, and record review, the facility failed to..." — this is the deficiency statement.
- Findings, organized by resident or by event. Resident references are anonymized as Resident #1, #2, etc.
- The summary linking the findings back to the regulation.
Two things to look for in the narrative:
- How many residents were affected? "Resident #1 of one resident reviewed" is a different signal than "Residents #1, #4, #7, #9 of fourteen residents reviewed."
- Was the deficiency actively occurring during the survey, or was it historical? "Surveyor observed on day 2 of the survey" is more recent than "Per the May 12 incident report."
Plan of Correction — read it skeptically
Every cited deficiency requires a Plan of Correction. The POC tells you four things:
- What systemic change will be made (not just for the affected resident).
- Who is responsible for the correction and ongoing monitoring.
- How and how often it'll be monitored.
- The completion date.
A vague POC ("staff will be re-educated on infection control protocols by 6/30") with no measurement plan and no responsible party is a weak POC. A specific POC ("The DON will audit 10 wound charts weekly for 12 weeks; results reported to QAPI committee monthly") is a strong one.
A pattern of weak POCs across multiple cycles, especially if the same tags recur, is a real signal — it suggests the building isn't actually fixing things, just papering over them.
The pattern that should make you stop
When the same F-tag repeats across multiple survey cycles — especially F689 (accidents), F684 (quality of care), or F725-727 (staffing) — and the POC each time is generic, that is a building where the operational system is not working. Star ratings can mask this because each survey resets the cycle. The narrative does not.
How ClearLTC presents inspection data
We pull the full deficiency list from each AHCA survey, with scope/severity letters, F-tags, narrative excerpts, and POC text. Each facility profile shows the trend across cycles — repeat tags are flagged automatically.
If you'd rather skim, the summary view groups deficiencies by severity tier so you can see at a glance whether you're looking at A-through-C drift or G-and-above harm.