California Assisted Living Regulations and Records

When choosing an assisted living community, it is important to understand California state regulations for assisted living facilities and know how to look up assisted living license information. But public access to assisted living records varies greatly by state.

We developed a system to rate each state on how easy – or difficult – it is to find important assisted living records and reports, and compiled tips to help you in your search.

States with the most transparent records allow you to look up important information about each assisted living facility online, including inspections, complaints, survey results, violations, capacity, and whether the facility accepts Medicaid.

Access to California assisted living records: Exceptional

Public access to assisted living records and reports for the state of California is exceptional. Key findings that informed this rating include:

• California has conveniently integrated information about licensed communities and information about violations and inspections results.
• California has generally transparent assisted living records, and increased significantly in our rankings because required inspections occur every two years.

How to look up California assisted living licenses and records

• To locate licensed communities, use the California Department of Social Services’ website.
• From the results, click the name of a community to be taken to its details, including links to inspection reports.

How we arrived at our California rating

We developed a standard methodology for state data collection and evaluation, and based our rating primarily on the objective, state-specific accessibility criteria outlined in these questions:

1. Are licensed assisted living communities listed online in any form? Yes
2. If Yes to #1, is the information updated frequently? Yes
3. If Yes to #1, is the list of licensed communities searchable? Yes
4. Does the state post inspections, complaints, survey results, or violations online? Yes
5. If Yes to #4, is the information updated frequently? [within 90 days] Yes
6. If Yes to #2 and #4, is the enforcement information included in the same place as licensed communities? Yes
7. If Yes to #4 and No to #6, are violations / inspections searchable at all? Yes
8. Is information about special licensing for care shown? Yes
9. Capacity shown? Yes
10. Payment types shown, [e.g. Medicaid, private pay]? No
11. Administrator / Contact name shown? Yes
12. State may fine facility? Yes
13. Frequency of inspections? Every 24 months
14. Website includes pricing of facility? No