From an Advocates for Better Care in Rhode Island press release in SteveAhlquist.news
The two tools are:
- Assisted Living Inspection Records:
Plain-language summaries of every Rhode Island Department of Health
(RIDOH) inspection report for licensed assisted living residences,
with links to the original reports, a map view of every facility, a
printable checklist of questions to ask on a visit tailored to each
residence, and the site in English and Spanish.
- RI Nursing Home Dashboard: CMS
(Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) quality, staffing,
and inspection data for every Rhode Island nursing home, built from
federal data going back to 2019 and updated monthly, plus a plain-language
guide to choosing between a nursing home and assisted living and who pays
for what, also in English and Spanish.
None of this has been available to the public in a usable form before. Rhode Island’s assisted living inspection reports exist only as individual PDFs filed in dozens of separate folders in RIDOH’s Google Drive, with no index and no way to search or compare across facilities.
CMS
publishes some of this on its own consumer site, Care Compare, but only as
a single current snapshot, with no historical trend data or inspection
summaries. The full underlying dataset behind Care Compare is released
nationally as a massive raw file that, in practice, is not something a family
or even most researchers can open and use. ABC-RI built both tools to take data
that has technically always been public but was never usable and turn it into
something anyone can search from a phone.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Definitely use databases to help you rule out facilities with poor ratings and add high-rated facilities to your list for consideration.
BUT before making any final decisions, I strongly urge you to GO VISIT! Go in person, WITHOUT an appointment and ask to look around. Of course, they will insist you be accompanied, and that's OK.
Consider factors you don't generally see in databases - e.g. smells, noise, crowding, interactions between staff and residents, the expression on patients' faces. You will see differences between facilities only detectable by visiting. - Will Collette
“Families have little to go on when they’re helping choose a
nursing home or an assisted living residence for someone they love, often
during a crisis,” said Kathleen Gerard, Director of ABC-RI. “These tools
won’t make the decision for you, but they’ll help you ask the right questions
before you sign anything, and they’ll show you key information about the home
you’re trusting to care for you or your loved one.”
Why now
ABC-RI built these tools first for people choosing a nursing
home or assisted living residence, for themselves or someone they love, often
under pressure, with little time and no easy way to compare their options. The
same data is also useful to policymakers. The Rhode Island General Assembly
convenes its 2027 session in January, and ABC-RI will use this data to continue
pushing for legislation to improve oversight and transparency, ultimately
improving care and protecting the rights of long-term care residents.
Rhode Island nursing home ownership is consolidating under a small number of investor groups, and the pace is accelerating.
Marquis Health/Tryko spent roughly six years assembling an eight-home Rhode Island portfolio, including a single 2022 deal that picked up four homes at once.
AdviniaCare has
matched that same eight-home footprint in about a year and a half, entering
Rhode Island in January 2025 and expanding rapidly through 2026, and it isn’t
done: AdviniaCare is now buying three more homes in Greenville, Coventry, and
Warren. That pending sale will push AdviniaCare’s statewide share of nursing
home beds to 18.7 percent, according to ABC-RI’s analysis of CMS and RIDOH
ownership records. Three of AdviniaCare’s eight current Rhode Island homes are
federal Special
Focus Facility candidates, CMS’s designation for homes with a history
of serious, persistent quality problems, and its Rhode Island homes average 1.6
out of 5 CMS stars.
“Whether you’re choosing a care facility for yourself or a
loved one, or crafting legislation and policy to help improve the care and
quality of life in those facilities, you need the clear, accessible data that
these tools provide.”
About the data
Both tools draw on public records: RIDOH inspection reports
for assisted living residences, and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid
Services (CMS) data and RIDOH records for nursing homes. ABC-RI reviews each
entry for accuracy before publishing and invites corrections at corrections@abc-ri.org.
Advocates for Better Care in Rhode Island is an
independent advocacy organization dedicated to protecting the rights and
improving the care of long-term care residents in Rhode Island.
