Editorial Policy

Official Sources Only

Facts about care, coverage, nursing home quality and the law come only from government agencies and the official text of the law:

• the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), including Care Compare, the source of every nursing home figure, and Medicare.gov and Medicaid.gov for what coverage pays for;
• the Administration for Community Living (ACL) for the Eldercare Locator, caregiver support and the Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program;
• the National Institute on Aging (NIA) for types of care, dementia and caregiving;
• the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for veterans' long-term care and benefits;
• the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), through FDA-approved drug labels, for medicines;
• federal regulations, such as the requirements for nursing homes and residents' rights;
• state licensing agencies, Medicaid agencies, aging agencies, survey agencies and ombudsman programs for state facts.

Senior living referral and placement companies, facility marketing, review sites, news stories, forums, personal stories and Wikipedia are never used as sources. Every figure shows its year and where it came from. The How We Research page explains how the nursing home data and state facts are gathered and refreshed.

No Ratings or Reviews of Our Own

Nursing home pages show CMS's star ratings, staffing figures, inspection results, penalties and quality measures, with their dates and definitions. Senior Care Help doesn't add its own scores, grades, reviews or "best" labels. Where a page sorts or groups homes, it states the CMS rule it uses. Inspection and penalty facts are reported as CMS records them, and no home is called unsafe or dangerous; a page says what CMS found and when.

Information, Not Advice

Pages explain how long-term care works, what the options are and how to pay for it. They don't assess anyone's memory or health, offer cognitive tests or tell you which care, facility or medicine is right for one person. They are not legal or financial advice: for Medicaid planning, powers of attorney and similar steps, talk with an elder law attorney or your state Medicaid agency. Pages never promise an outcome.

Medication facts come only from FDA labels: what a medicine is approved for and the warnings on its label. Pages never suggest starting, stopping or changing a medicine.

Help Lines Where They Matter

Every page shows the Eldercare Locator at 1-800-677-1116 for free help finding local aging services, and 911 for emergencies. Pages about abuse or neglect name the Long-Term Care Ombudsman and Adult Protective Services. Caregiving pages also list the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988) for caregivers in emotional crisis.

Respectful, Plain Language

• Pages talk to you directly, in short sentences, in type large enough to read comfortably, for a family member reading on a phone between calls.
• Older people are people first: "older adults," "your parent," "a resident." Pages never use "elderly" as a noun for a group of people.
• Dementia is described plainly and without pity: "a person living with dementia," "a person with Alzheimer's disease." Pages never describe someone as "suffering" from dementia, and never use outdated words for memory loss such as "senility" or "demented."
• Care terms, such as "skilled nursing," "memory care" or "spend-down," are explained the first time they appear.
• Pages state a fact and its limit once, without scare language or piled-up hedges.

What Every Page Goes Through Before Publishing

• It answers its main question near the top, with the source and date.
• Each fact is recorded with the official page it came from, and automated checks confirm that figures trace to those records.
• Automated checks confirm that internal links work and that the wording meets these standards.
• It is checked for accuracy against its sources and for plain wording by the Senior Care Help Editorial Team. The team isn't a clinical or legal team, and its review covers accuracy and clarity, not medical or legal judgment.

Listings Are Never Sold

Every nursing home certified by Medicare or Medicaid is listed, with the details CMS publishes. No facility can pay to be listed, ranked, featured or described differently. Listing phone numbers are the homes' own numbers from CMS, never tracked or call-center lines.

How Corrections Work

A page is corrected when an official source shows it is wrong or out of date. The correction fixes the detail, cites the supporting source and updates the page's review date. State facts are re-checked at least once a year. To report an error, use the contact form with the page address and, if you can, the official page that shows the right detail. Changes to a nursing home's own data go through CMS and the state survey agency, as the How We Research page explains.

Independence From Advertisers

The site is paid for by display ads from Google AdSense. Google chooses the ads; advertisers never see pages before they go live and have no say in what they say. Ads never appear inside or between nursing home listings, and they never decide which homes are shown or in what order. The advertising disclosure covers where ads appear.

How Paid Offers Would Be Labelled

The site has no referral or affiliate offers today. If one is added, it will sit in its own box labelled "Sponsored," with a disclosure line, and never inside nursing home listings, a guide's answer or a list of official resources. Its links will be marked as sponsored for search engines, and the advertising disclosure will name the type of offer.

Who Is Responsible

Senior Care Help is published by Rupe Enterprises LLC, a Washington company. Neither the publisher nor the editorial team provides care, medical, legal or financial advice, or placement. To compare nursing homes, use the nursing home finder, or call the Eldercare Locator at 1-800-677-1116 for local aging services.