On October 15, 2026, CMS posted updated SNF Provider Preview Reports in iQIES. The reports carry each skilled nursing facility’s SNF Quality Reporting Program (QRP) quality-measure scores — the same scores scheduled to be published on the Care Compare tool on Medicare.gov and in the Provider Data Catalog during the January 2027 refresh. What a facility sees in its preview report is, with one narrow exception, what the public will see in January.
CMS gives providers until November 14, 2026 to review their performance data. The window is real but narrow: it exists so a facility can ask CMS to re-examine a score it believes was calculated wrong. It does not reopen the facility’s own data — every submission and correction deadline behind these scores has already passed. Knowing which of those two things the window does is the whole job of the next four weeks.
Where do the preview reports live, and how does a facility open its own?
In iQIES, behind a HARP login. Sign in to iQIES with a Health Care Quality Information Systems (HCQIS) Access Roles and Profile (HARP) user ID and password, choose My Reports from the Reports menu, and open the SNF Provider Preview Reports folder; the available reports are listed newest first, ready to download. New iQIES users receive the latest preview report in that folder automatically once their user role is approved. A missing or inaccessible report is an access problem, not a data problem, and it is fixable inside the window: the iQIES Service Center takes those questions at iqies@cms.hhs.gov and 1-800-339-9313.
Which measures and data periods are in the January 2027 preview reports?
Five blocks of data, each with its own look-back period. The assessment-based measures rest on MDS assessment data facilities submitted from Quarter 2, 2025 through Quarter 1, 2026. The CDC Influenza Vaccination Coverage Among Healthcare Personnel measure covers Quarter 4, 2025 through Quarter 1, 2026. The claims-based Discharge to Community and Potentially Preventable 30-Day Post-Discharge Readmission measures run from Quarter 4, 2023 through Quarter 3, 2025, as does the annual refresh of Medicare Spending Per Beneficiary. The SNF Healthcare-Associated Infections Requiring Hospitalization measure — the claims-based infection measure behind so much of the infection control work facilities document all year — covers Quarter 4, 2024 through Quarter 3, 2025. A score that looks wrong against this quarter’s internal numbers may simply be an older period than the reader assumes; the period is the first thing to check.
What changed in this refresh that is not a score at all?
Two measures are gone. CMS has removed the COVID-19 Vaccination Coverage among Healthcare Personnel measure and the COVID-19 Vaccine: Percent of Patients/Residents Who Are Up to Date measure from SNF QRP public reporting, effective with the January 2027 refresh. Neither appears on the new preview reports, both come off Medicare.gov and the Provider Data Catalog in January, and their historical data remains available only in the SNF QRP archive files on the Provider Data Catalog. A facility comparing this preview report against last quarter’s will count two fewer measures — that is the removal taking effect, not a reporting error, and it is not something a review request can change.
What can a facility still challenge before November 14?
A score it believes CMS got wrong — specifically, the numerator, denominator, or quality metric of a measure in its preview report. The challenge is a request for CMS review, it must be filed during the 30-day preview period, and it is aimed at CMS’s calculation, not at the facility’s submitted data. Requests may be submitted from the day the reports are available in iQIES through 11:59:59 p.m. PST on the last day of the preview period, and CMS will not accept any request for review submitted after the posted deadline. That is the whole of what the window is for, and it is enough: a genuine calculation error caught now is caught before the number is public.
How is a review request actually submitted?
By email only — CMS states it is the only method it will review. Send the request to SNFQRPPRquestions@cms.hhs.gov with the subject line “[Provider Name] SNF Public Reporting Request for Review of Data” and the facility’s CMS Certification Number (CCN) included. The email itself must contain the CCN; the facility’s business name and business address; contact information for the CEO or a CEO-designated representative, including name, email address, telephone number, and a physical mailing address rather than a post-office box; and the supporting information behind the belief that the data are erroneous — which quality measures are affected and which aspect of each measure, numerator, denominator, or quality metric, is in question. Two hard edges: a request containing protected health information will not be reviewed, and neither will a request sent by any other means. CMS sends an email confirmation of receipt, may ask the named contact for additional information, and delivers its decision by email.
What will the preview period not fix?
The facility’s own data. CMS is explicit that facilities reviewing their preview reports cannot correct any of the underlying data, because every data submission and correction deadline for the targeted period has already passed. CMS will not grant reconsideration for errors that resulted from a facility’s own inaccurate submissions that it failed to correct before the applicable quarterly deadline, and it will not revisit calculations a provider calls inaccurate because the data behind them was missing and submitted late. If a facility updates its assessment data now, the update shows up only in its Facility-Level Quality Measure report and Patient-Level Quality Measure report — not in the preview report, and not on Medicare.gov. The data used to generate the preview reports is frozen for the January refresh.
If CMS agrees a score is wrong, when does the correction appear?
On CMS’s quarterly cadence, not the facility’s. CMS’s stated process is that data it decides or agrees to correct is displayed during the subsequent quarterly release of SNF quality data on Medicare.gov, and corrections submitted after a preview report is generated are not reflected until the next quarterly preview report is generated. Filing the request is still the right move — it is the only route that puts a CMS-side error into the correction process at all. But no one should promise a board, a referral source, or a survey file that a granted review rewrites the January number on demand; the preview window starts corrections, it does not schedule them.
What happens if a facility misses the window entirely?
The scores publish in January exactly as previewed, and there is no late door: CMS does not accept review requests after the deadline, for any reason the process names. The repair work then moves upstream into the next cycle, where it always actually lived — the Review and Correct reports CMS makes available ahead of each quarterly data submission deadline, which exist so a facility can spot problems in its own assessment data while correction is still possible. (The CDC/NHSN measures sit outside those reports; CDC provides its own CMS Reports inside NHSN for the same purpose.) A missed preview draws no penalty by itself. It simply spends the one chance to flag a CMS calculation error before the number goes public — and it is usually a sign that the facility’s routine for watching its own performance metrics runs on the public calendar instead of the submission calendar.
The short version
The January 2027 scores already exist. They are sitting in a folder in iQIES, they are built from data whose correction deadlines closed months ago, and until November 14, 2026 the only question they are open to is whether CMS calculated them correctly. Pull the report, check the periods before the scores, and if a numerator, denominator, or metric is wrong in a way that is CMS’s error rather than the facility’s data, file the one email the process allows — to the right address, in the right format, with no patient information in it. For the wider picture of how CMS oversight is converging with the other regimes facility teams answer to, see HFH’s overview of healthcare regulatory convergence in 2026.
Source: CMS, “Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) Quality Reporting Program (QRP) Public Reporting,” including the October 15, 2026 update announcing the SNF Provider Preview Reports for the January 2027 refresh.