Free senior care guidance for Greater Cleveland families. No cost to you, ever.
Call (216) 483-7940
Cleveland Senior Advisor

How to Verify a Cleveland Facility's License

Two free state tools, what each one shows, and why a clean review page means nothing about the regulatory record.

Get matched freeCall (216) 483-7940
Home›Ohio Rules›How to Verify a Cleveland Facility's License

How to check a Cleveland-area community's record yourself

Ohio publishes this free. Two different tools, and they answer different questions:

CMS star ratings on Medicare Care Compare cover nursing homes only. Ohio's Residential Care Facilities, the license type covering assisted living and memory care, are not star-rated and do not appear on Care Compare. The Ohio Department of Aging's Long-Term Care Quality Navigator publishes some consumer-facing information about assisted living communities, but it is not a CMS-style star rating system and does not cover every community. Assisted living oversight in Ohio is state-only, through the Ohio Department of Health. Families routinely assume a community with no bad reviews has a clean regulatory record. Those are unrelated things. Pull the ODH licensing search.

To report a concern about a licensed facility, call the Ohio Department of Health complaint line at 1-800-342-0553. Live call coverage Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern. Voicemail is available 24 hours a day and is checked twice daily outside live hours.

Home health agency complaints go to a separate line: 1-800-669-3534.

What to actually look at once you are in there

Pulling the record is easy. Reading it usefully is the part nobody explains.

  • Match the license type to your parent's needs, not just to today. Ohio's single RCF license does not signal acuity, so ask directly about admission and retention criteria.
  • Check the licensee name against the operator. Ownership in Cleveland-area senior living turns over regularly, and buildings are often marketed under a brand that differs from the license holder.
  • Read deficiency narratives, do not count citations. A missing signature and an injured resident appear in the same document, formatted identically.
  • Look for repetition across surveys. One citation is an incident. The same finding across consecutive surveys is a pattern.
  • Check correction dates. How fast a facility fixes something tells you more than whether it happened.

Reviews are measuring something else

Families routinely substitute Google reviews for the regulatory record. They are unrelated. A warmly reviewed community can carry serious citations, and a clinically strong building can have a mediocre review page because the people writing are grieving. Read both, but do not let one stand in for the other.

Questions Cleveland families ask

What are Ohio's income and asset limits for nursing home Medicaid in 2025?

As of 2025, the income limit for a single applicant is $2,901 per month, 300 percent of the SSI federal benefit rate, and the asset limit is $2,000 for a single applicant or $3,000 combined for a couple where both need care. A community spouse can keep between $31,267 and $148,620 in countable assets under the Community Spouse Resource Allowance. These figures adjust annually and should be confirmed with the Ohio Department of Medicaid or an elder law attorney.

How do I actually apply for Medicaid long-term care coverage in Ohio?

Applications go through the Ohio Department of Medicaid at benefits.ohio.gov, or families can contact the Area Agency on Aging serving their county for help with a waiver assessment and to get on any relevant waiting list. Applicants need to meet both the nursing-facility level-of-care clinical standard and the state's non-MAGI financial eligibility rules.

What is Medicaid Estate Recovery in Ohio, and can the state take my parent's house?

Ohio's Medicaid Estate Recovery Program (MERP) is a federally required program that recovers certain Medicaid long-term care payments from a deceased recipient's estate, for recipients 55 or older or of any age if permanently institutionalized. Ohio is an "expanded recovery" state, meaning assets passing outside probate, like transfer-on-death deeds or joint survivorship property, can be subject to recovery too. Recovery is delayed while a surviving spouse, minor child, or blind or disabled child lives in the home, and hardship waivers are evaluated case by case.

Does Ohio Medicaid pay for room and board in assisted living?

No. The Assisted Living Waiver pays only for personal care and supportive services delivered by the facility's staff; room and board is the resident's own responsibility, capped at the SSI federal benefit rate minus a $50 personal needs allowance. This is true across Ohio's long-term care Medicaid programs: PASSPORT and MyCare Ohio also do not cover room and board in any residential setting.

How much does assisted living cost in Ohio in 2025?

According to the 2025 CareScout Cost of Care Survey, the Ohio statewide median for an assisted living community is $6,103 a month ($73,230 a year), close to the 2025 national median of $6,200 a month. CareScout does not publish a separate Cleveland or Cuyahoga County figure, so this is a statewide median, not a local one.

Not sure where to start?

Answer five questions and a local advisor will come back with senior care options in Greater Cleveland that actually fit your situation and budget. It is free, and there is no obligation.

Find care options
Find senior care — free