North Carolina Skilled Nursing - Market Intelligence

3G Healthcare Real Estate is a sell-side advisory firm working only in skilled nursing facility real estate. This report is the North Carolina ownership and operating picture as we track it, drawn from CMS Provider Information, federal ownership filings, county property records, published Medicaid rate files, and our own resolution work.

Every figure below describes the market in aggregate; nothing here is specific to any single owner or property.

North Carolina carries a median Medicaid daily rate of $350 across 297 rated facilities, 71 percent of the buildings we track in the state, with the middle half of the market between $340 and $361 a day. The distribution is tight, which usually means a cost-capped methodology holding most buildings in a band. For-profit buildings run $16 a day above non-profit ones ($351 against $335 at the median), a gap that reflects the class each sits in rather than the quality of the building. Rates are effective April 2026.

North Carolina skilled nursing is 84 percent for-profit by facility count: 350 of 419 buildings, averaging 2.70 stars overall and 2.45 on staffing. The balance is 60 non-profit, 9 government. Non-Profit buildings rate highest at 4.17 stars and for-profit lowest at 2.70. Ownership type as CMS records it describes the license holder. The real estate behind it is frequently a different party, and that is the layer we resolve.

North Carolina averages 2.93 stars overall across 419 facilities and 43,850 licensed beds. Average occupancy runs 83 percent, which is the number that decides whether a building services its debt. Quality splits at the bottom: 179 facilities (43 percent) rate one or two stars overall, 89 of them one star. Special Focus status or candidacy covers 12 of them. CMS fines on the current record total $15.7M across 240 facilities. Total nurse turnover averages 49.1 percent. Counting any facility that carries at least one of a one- or two-star overall rating, Special Focus status or candidacy, CMS fines on the current record, or a distressed-title flag from county records, 267 of 419 buildings show a distress signal, 64 percent of the total.

The eight largest operating groups run 189 of North Carolina's 419 skilled nursing facilities, 45 percent of the state and 49 percent of its licensed beds. The remaining 230 buildings are spread across a long tail of smaller operators and independents.

Operating scale is not the same as real-estate ownership, and in most markets the two are separate. The property behind these portfolios is held across a far larger and more fragmented set of owners, many of them holding a single building outright. That is the layer we resolve, and it is why a market that looks consolidated from the operating side is usually anything but from the ownership side.

North Carolina's 77 reporting hospitals discharged at least 59,936 traditional-Medicare inpatients in the diagnosis groups that most often need skilled care afterward, in federal fiscal 2024. Sepsis leads at 16,875 discharges. Every one of these patients needed a next setting, and the facilities positioned closest to the highest-volume hospitals see that demand first.

316 of North Carolina's 402 graded skilled nursing facilities (79%) are taking a live Medicare payment cut this federal fiscal year under CMS's SNF Value-Based Purchasing program, which blends readmissions, infections, staffing and turnover into one multiplier and applies it to every Medicare day a building bills. The graded set averages a 0.9% cut across the whole state. A federal number like that says little read alone, which is why we check it against the fuller financial and operational record we hold on every building before it reaches a report: the buildings already under pressure elsewhere are the ones a payment cut actually threatens.

Medicare Advantage now covers 58.0% of North Carolina's Medicare population, as of April 2026. That is up 5.6 points in three years. Rockingham County runs highest in the state at 77.0%. An MA member typically draws fewer skilled-nursing days per admission than traditional Medicare, so the counties at the top of that list are the ones structurally losing SNF days first, whatever the raw discharge count says.

Beds concentrate where the population does: Mecklenburg County with 29 facilities and 2,983 beds, Wake County with 21 facilities and 2,174 beds, Guilford County with 20 facilities and 2,284 beds.

1. CMS Provider Information / Care Compare: facility counts, licensed beds, occupancy, Five-Star ratings, staffing, nurse turnover, fines and Special Focus status, processed 2026-07-01.
2. CMS Payroll-Based Journal: nurse staffing hours and turnover.
3. Federal ownership filings: PECOS Form 855A indirect-owner tree and HCRIS cost-report related parties.
4. County property and mortgage records via the 3G real-estate-ownership resolution layer.
5. 3G Healthcare Real Estate proprietary warehouse, resolved as of the date shown above.
6. North Carolina published Medicaid nursing-facility rate files: 297 rated facilities, effective April 2026.
7. State and federal legislative and regulatory tracking via the 3G intelligence scan, with the source for each item linked in that section.
8. CMS Medicare inpatient claims (fiscal 2024): hospital discharge volumes by diagnosis group, traditional Medicare only; CMS withholds lines under 11 discharges, so volumes are minimums. Readmission rates from CMS Care Compare's three-year measure window.
9. CMS SNF Value-Based Purchasing facility-level file, FY2026 determination (published February 2026): readmission, infection, staffing and turnover measures rolled into one Medicare payment multiplier per facility.
10. CMS Medicare Monthly Enrollment: Medicare Advantage penetration by county, April 2026.