WinAssisted Living / Residential Assisted Living (RAL)

I read three years of inspection reports for every licensed home near me before making a single offer

Total cost was three weekends and about $18 of gas.

My state posts survey and complaint inspection results for licensed care homes online. I pulled everything for the 14 licensed homes inside a 20 mile circle, 96 beds total, going back three years. Then I called all 14 pretending to be nobody special, just asked whether they had openings and what a private room ran.

What came out of it:

Eleven of the 14 said no openings. Two of those said they keep a wait list. Private rooms ran $3,600 to $5,200 depending on how nice the house was and what the care level added.

Most of the citations were staffing paperwork. Missing training records, a background check that got filed late, medication logs with gaps. Only two homes had anything that looked serious to me, and both were the same owner.

The thing I actually didn't expect: not one home in the northern half of the county said yes when I asked about residents who need two people to help them move. They all said they'd refer that out. That's 11 miles of nothing.

I'm not claiming I found a gold mine. I found a question worth asking, and I found it before I spent money instead of after. I'm now talking to an operator who has run a home for six years and wants a second building, and I had actual things to ask her about because I'd read her survey history.

Note for anyone copying this: whether these reports are online at all depends on your state. Mine posts them. A friend two states over has to file a records request and wait.

Answer

1tonyv88SO4CPRO6

This is the right first weekend and I'd add three things from managing property near this world.

Read the citations for repeats, not for count. A home with six one-off paperwork findings across three years is a busy home with an imperfect binder. A home with the same finding in consecutive surveys has a management problem, because somebody told them to fix it and they didn't. Most states also tag findings by how serious the harm was and how many residents it touched, and the labels differ state to state, so learn what yours calls the top tier before you judge anybody.

"No openings" on a phone call is soft. It can mean full, it can mean full of people who are late paying, it can mean one bed empty and they don't want a stranger touring on a Tuesday. A wait list with no deposit attached is a list of people being polite. When you talk to your operator, ask for the last 24 months of month-end census, not the current number.

On your gap in the northern half of the county, find out why before you treat it as an opening. Sometimes it's real. Sometimes the reason nobody takes two-person transfers is that the reimbursement doesn't cover the second caregiver at that acuity, or the local surveyors take a hard line on staffing ratios for it. Your long-term care ombudsman program is a public office and they will usually talk to you about what the homes in the area are like. That call is free too.

I read three years of inspection reports for every licensed home near me before making a single offer

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