A nursing home or skilled nursing facility (SNF) is a place of house for people who require constant nursing care and have important deficiencies with activities of daily living. Residents include the elderly and younger adults with corporeal disabilities. Adults 18 or older can stay in a skilled nursing capability to receive physical, occupational, and additional rehabilitative therapies following an accident or illness. In the US, nursing homes are necessary to have a licensed nurse on duty 24 hours a day, and during at least one move each day, one of those nurses must be a Registered Nurse. In April, 2005 there were a sum of 16,094 nursing homes in the United States, down from 16,516 in December, 2002. Some states have nursing homes that are called nursing facilities (NF), which do not have beds specialized for Medicare patients, but can only treat patients whose payments basis is Private Pay or Medicaid.

A SNF is an institution or a separate part of an institution, which is mainly engaged in providing skilled nursing care or rehabilitation services that will facilitate rehabilitation of injured, disabled, or sick persons. Hospitals often have preparations with SNFs to provide follow up care after a patient no longer needs the stage of services that an acute hospital provides. The patient is sent to a SNF to get skilled care / rehabilitation until they are capable to return home (or are at a state where additional improvement is no longer possible).

A nursing home is house facility that provides a room, meals, and help with activities of daily living and recreation. Usually, nursing home residents have physical or mental problems that keep them from living on their own. They generally require daily assistance.

In common, SNF care is covered under health insurance plans and Medicare, where nursing home care is not. Many patients who live in nursing homes often fatigue their personal finances at some point, and in the U.S.A., once that happens; they are qualified for Medicaid (care for the poor) which will pay the nursing home for the care they offer. However, several nursing homes would argue that the amount Medicaid pays does not wrap the cost they face in providing that care.