By David Besnette
In this research guide you will learn how to get a COMPLETE, non-commercial, Statewide list of Assisted Living & Senior Care Facilities Provided by the State of Alabama.
Researching assisted living and senior care online can be a mixed bag at best, and unsafe at it’s worst. I know this all too well, as I have been a researcher and writer in the Senior Care industry for over 12 years now.
This is also why I decided to create this site, SeniorLivingFAQ – to provide an absolutely safe, and immensely useful place for seniors and families to go to discover the best data on assisted living facilities, memory care, independent living, and other senior care options.
I am pleased to report that there are a number of excellent, trustworthy places you can go to fulfill all of your Senior Care research needs for Alabama.
Learn How To Get A COMPLETE Ad-Free List of Assisted Living Facilities and Nursing Homes in Alabama – Statewide!
Every city, county and rural area is covered by the ADPH Facility Directory. You can print your facility list, or even save it to excel.
Alabama’s Safest Facilities
Learn how to File a Complaint against an Assisted Living Facility in Alabama
Alabama Assisted Living Research Guide
The first resource for researching assisted living in Alabama is so good that you almost don’t need to go any further. This would be the Alabama Department of Public Health website, Health Care Facilities page
http://www.adph.org/HEALTHCAREFACILITIES/Default.asp?id=688
Here, you will find a plethora of great facility data, facility deficiencies, rules, complaints information, licensure resources, and so much more.
To find assisted living in Alabama, I recommend that you go directly to the Health Care Facilities Directory section of the site.
Here, you will be able to access a very robust facility directory tool, where you can lists for every assisted facility in Alabama, including
- Assisted Living
- Hospice
- Nursing Homes
- Residential Treatment/Care Facilities
and more.
The great thing here is that you can research by City, County or License Status, and even export the data to Excel!
For example, a search for Assisted Living Facilities in Birmingham brought up several dozen results, each of which includes:
- Direct Contact Number
- Administrator’s Name
- Facility ID
- Whether Medicare is Accepted
- License Type
- Address
This list is also incredibly useful in that you can download it, save it to .pdf, or print it very easily. This is great if you are touring facilities and need to make notes.
The data output will look something like this:
Assisted Living Placement Help – Alabama Statewide
Viewing Assisted Living Facility Deficiencies in Alabama
Another incredibly valuable piece of information to have at your disposal is a facility’s history of deficiencies, surveys, and complaints. This information is easy to access, and is free to the public by visiting this page.
It looks (at the time of this writing) like this:
This is information not often included on most commercial senior care websites.
You can, again, easily filter by county, or a facility name to get a more precise locational list of facilities in the area of Alabama that you are interested in.
You can select a survey, and it will usually bring up details of the survey or deficiencies in a downloadable, and printable .pdf.
The .pdf output looks like this:
These reports are important and useful in that they offer a way for you to gain insights into how a facility is managed and operated. You can tease out specific incidents which helps you to ask relevant questions to facility staff and administrators as you work your way through the research process.
Rules and Regulations for Assisted Living in Alabama
Another section of the Health Care Facilities site offers links to the rules and regulations for Assisted Living Facilities, Specialty Care Assisted Living, Hospice Centers, Nursing Facilities, and more for Alabama. The site looks like this:
This, again, is not information normally available on other senior care websites, unfortunately. It is, however, such important and useful information for you to know how to access, as it gives you and your family a ‘roadmap’ to what you can expect in terms of care, rights and dignity by receiving care from a Healthcare facility in Alabama.
To see an example, please view the State Rules and Regulations for assisted living facilities in Alabama here:
http://www.adph.org/HEALTHCAREFACILITIES/assets/AsstedLivingRules112015.pdf
The document is 60 pages long, and is free to anyone. You can easily save or print this manual, and it includes precise information relevant to:
- Licensure requirements and process
- Administration
- Personnel and Training
- Records and Reports
- Care of Residents
- Food Service
- Laundry
- Sanitation and Housekeeping
- Fire and Safety
- Physical Plant
Near the beginning of the document, you’ll see a section for Definitions which is good to review. There is a specific Definition for Assisted Living for the State of Alabama.
I mention definitions since they vary depending on which state you are in. Often times, children of aging parents are researching from across state lines, and might assume that assisted living in one state is similar to another. In fact, some states do not formally recognize terms such as assisted living. For this, it’s wise to have a fair idea of how certain Senior Care terms, such as assisted living are defined in Alabama.
Additional Sources of Aging & Long-Term Care Information and Support
I recommend that you become familiar with AlabamaAgeline, which is a Government-supported portal for aging and LTC in Alabama. You can access information and support in the following areas:
- Caregiver Assistance
- Elder Abuse (Adult Abuse Hotline at 800-458-7214)
- Health Care Fraud
- Long Term Care (including Resident Rights, Transfers and Discharges and Care Provided)
- Ombudsman Support
- Medicaid and Medicaid Waivers
- Nutrition
- Prescription Assistance
- Finding your Local Area Agency on Aging (call 1-800-AGE-LINE)
Alabama Assisted Living Association
This site offers even more information for researching assisted living in Alabama. For starters, they offer a ‘facilities by county’ section which offers a free and easy way to learn about facility options in your Alabama county.
- The great things about the data provided for each facility:
- A facility map
- Direct phone number
- Number of Beds
- Number of SCALF beds (Specialty Care Assisted Living Beds)
- A direct website address, if available
The Assisted Living Association of Alabama is a great place to learn about consumer information for assisted living, education and events, policy and much more!
The sites, databases and resources outlined above should all be considered highly trustworthy and safe places to conduct your research. If you know of another great resource for researching Senior Living options in Alabama, please let us know about it!
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Thank you for providing this research guide. Really appreciate it.