The assisted living license behind every Dayton community

Which agency licenses assisted living in Dayton, Ohio?

The Ohio Department of Health (ODH) does: every assisted living building in Montgomery County and the rest of the state is licensed as a residential care facility (RCF) under Ohio Revised Code Chapter 3721 and Ohio Administrative Code Chapter 3701-16.

Families sometimes assume the Ohio Department of Aging is in charge because its name is on the consumer guide and the waiver programs. Aging runs the programs that pay for care and publishes the inspection results in a consumer-friendly form; Health issues the license, writes the rules and sends the surveyors. Dayton, Kettering and the county have no licensing role at all, beyond zoning and building codes.

In Montgomery, Greene, Miami, Clark, Darke and Preble counties ODH lists 73 active residential care facilities with 6,667 licensed beds, 30 of them in Montgomery County, from 16 to 278 beds each.

What does Ohio mean by a residential care facility?

A residential care facility is a home that provides accommodations, supervision and personal care to three or more unrelated adults, and may also provide limited skilled nursing; a building that fits that definition may call itself assisted living or memory care, but the license is the same.

There are no tiers. A 16-bed house in Greenville and a 278-bed campus in Springfield hold the identical license; what separates them is size, the services each chooses to offer, and whether the building runs a special care unit for dementia. Ohio does not tier the license by how well residents can evacuate in an emergency, as some states do, so the questions about night staffing and fire safety have to be asked building by building.

How much nursing care can an Ohio RCF provide?

Limited skilled nursing only: an RCF may give part-time, intermittent skilled nursing, and a resident may receive it for no more than 120 days in any 12-month period unless the facility, the resident and the resident's physician sign a written agreement to extend it (ORC 3721.011).

The cap is the practical line between assisted living and a nursing home in Ohio. Hospice residents are treated differently, which is why many Dayton-area RCFs list hospice service on their ODH record and can keep a resident through the end of life. A facility that provides skilled nursing must have a registered nurse supervising it and a licensed nurse on call whenever none is in the building (OAC 3701-16-05).

Who has to run an Ohio RCF?

An administrator who works at least 20 hours a week in the building and is present between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. when on duty, with an acting administrator named for other times (OAC 3701-16-05(A)(3)).

Staff who give personal care must meet Ohio's qualification and training rules, and at least one of them must be on duty at all times, with someone trained in first aid present at all times as well. ODH's license detail lists the legal operator, which is the name to search for when you check ownership or a change of ownership. When a building is sold, the new operator needs its own license.

How often does ODH inspect assisted living around Dayton?

Ohio law calls for an unannounced licensure survey of every RCF at least once every 15 months, plus complaint investigations whenever ODH receives a complaint it decides to pursue.

Of the 72 Greater Dayton RCFs with a licensure survey on file, 22 had a clean latest survey; the median RCF collected 6 citations across licensure and complaint surveys in four years, and 0 complaint investigations found immediate jeopardy. Ohio is unusual in putting those results online: the Ohio Department of Aging's Long-Term Care Consumer Guide lists every licensure and complaint survey for the past four years, with the number of citations and links to the detail. Our facility pages summarize that record for every RCF in the six counties, and our guide to looking up a facility shows how to read it yourself.