F504: Provide or obtain laboratory services only when ordered by the attending physician
F504 is one of the federal requirements every Medicare and Medicaid certified nursing home must meet. CMS describes it as: Provide or obtain laboratory services only when ordered by the attending physician.
It sits in CMS's administration category.
CMS Health Deficiencies file, data as of September 1, 2026. The files hold each home's last three standard inspections and three years of complaint visits.
How seriously inspectors rate it
Every citation gets a letter for how much harm inspectors found and how many residents it touched (how to read the letters). 0.0% of F504 citations came from a complaint visit rather than a routine inspection.
By letter: D 1.
What inspectors wrote
Three recent F504 citations from different states, quoted from the inspectors' statements of deficiencies (CMS form 2567). Names are removed by CMS.
Inspectors wrote, September 8, 2017, scope and severity DBased on clinical record review, staff interviews and facility documentation the facility staff failed to ensure labs were obtained as ordered for one out of 26 residents (Resident #1) in the survey sample. The facility staff failed to ensure labs were obtained as ordered for the following: Basic Metabolic Panel (BMP) (1) and Hemoglobin A1C (2) for the month of August 2017.
Chesapeake Health and Rehabilitation Center, Chesapeake, VA
Most recent F504 citations
| Inspection | Home | Town | Letter |
|---|---|---|---|
| September 8, 2017 | Chesapeake Health and Rehabilitation Center | Chesapeake, VA | D |
F504 citations by state
Counts depend on how many homes a state has and how often its inspectors visit, so a larger number is not by itself a worse record.
| State | Citations |
|---|---|
| Virginia | 1 |
By inspection year: 2017 1.
Common questions
- What is F504 in a nursing home inspection?
- F504 is the federal requirement to "provide or obtain laboratory services only when ordered by the attending physician". CMS files it under administration. A home cited under F504 did not meet that requirement at the inspection.
- How often is F504 cited?
- The CMS files as of September 1, 2026 list 1 F504 citations at 1 nursing homes, 0 of them in the 12 months to that date. 0.0% were rated as actual harm or immediate jeopardy.
- Is a F504 citation serious?
- It depends on the letter. Most F504 citations (100.0%) were rated as potential for more than minimal harm, D to F. None in the current files is at the immediate jeopardy level.
The interpretive guidance inspectors use for each F-tag is CMS's State Operations Manual, Appendix PP. NursingHomeClear reports the citations as CMS records them and is not affiliated with CMS. All F-tags · Methodology