Boost Your Assisted Living Business with Smart Policies!
Mar 26, 2025
Starting an assisted living business is exciting, but if you don’t have clear policies and procedures (P&Ps) in place, things can quickly become chaotic.
Your P&Ps are the rulebook that keeps your business running smoothly. They help:
β Meet state regulations (so you can get licensed!)
β Guide your staff on daily operations
β Protect your business from legal issues
β Ensure quality care for your residents
Let’s break down how to create strong P&Ps that set your facility up for success.
Check out the video, too:
Why Policies and Procedures Matter
Think of P&Ps as the playbook for your assisted living home. They tell your staff what to do, when to do it, and how to do it right.
π‘ Example: What happens if a resident falls? Your Emergency Policy should explain:
- Who to call (911, family, administrator)
- How to document the incident
- What follow-up care is needed
If you don’t have clear policies, your staff might panic or make mistakes. That can lead to state violations, lawsuits, or even license revocation.
Understanding State Regulations
Unlike nursing homes, which follow federal laws, assisted living facilities are regulated by each state.
π Examples:
- Idaho: Regulations are under IDAPA (Idaho Administrative Procedures Act)
- Colorado: Rules are found in Chapters 2, 7, and 9
β Why does this matter? If your P&Ps don’t match your state’s laws, your licensing application could be denied or delayed.
π‘ Pro Tip: Always include the state statute number in your policies!
β At the beginning: “In accordance with Statute 1234.678, our facility will…”
β At the end: “This policy follows Statute 234.678.”
This makes it easier for regulators to approve your application!
Key Policies and Procedures to Include
Here are the must-have policies for your assisted living facility:
π 1. Resident Intake & Assessment
- Resident Intake Form – Standardized form for collecting key information
- Assessment Process – How to determine if a resident is a good fit for your facility
π Why It’s Important: Some residents require higher levels of care than you can provide. Having a clear assessment policy ensures you only accept residents you can care for.
π 2. Resident Rental Agreement
A resident agreement is a legally binding document covering:
β Payment terms
β Medication policies
β When a resident can be discharged
β Important: Work with an attorney to make sure your rental agreement follows state laws!
π©βοΈ 3. Staffing Policies
- Training Requirements – What courses and certifications your staff need
- Code of Conduct – Expectations for professionalism and behavior
- Policy Acknowledgements – Employees must sign off that they understand company policies
π Why It’s Important: If a staff member violates policies, you need documentation to legally justify termination if needed.
π¨ 4. Emergency Preparedness
Emergencies happen. Your policies should cover:
β Medical emergencies (falls, strokes, etc.)
β Natural disasters (fires, earthquakes, etc.)
β Staff responsibilities during emergencies
π Why It’s Important: If a resident gets injured and your staff doesn’t follow proper procedures, your facility could be held liable.
π‘ 5. Daily Operations
Your operations policies should cover:
β Housekeeping & maintenance
β Medication management
β Meal preparation & dietary needs
π Why It’s Important: These policies keep your facility clean, safe, and compliant.
Continual Policy Improvement
Policies aren’t set in stone. As regulations change, update your policies to stay compliant.
π Example: If your state increases training hours for caregivers, update your staffing policy to reflect that change.
Final Thoughts: Set Your Facility Up for Success
Writing strong policies and procedures is one of the hardest but most important steps in opening an assisted living facility.
By having clear rules in place, you’ll:
β
Get licensed faster
β
Keep staff accountable
β
Protect your business from legal issues
β
Provide top-quality care to residents
π― Next Steps:
π₯ Download the Business Plan Checklist to ensure your policies are aligned with your facility’s goals.
π₯Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
π Your policies can make or break your success—let’s get them right!
Show full transcript π
Transcript
00:00:00
hey friend I'm Brandon Gustafson and I help beginners like you launch their Assisted Living business in the next 12 months excited to have you here on the channel today we're going to be talking about how to build policies and procedures for your Assisted Living business so if you need some help with that make sure you stick around on today's [Music] video hey welcome back again to the channel excited to have you here if you need help figuring out if you have a profitable opportunity in front of you
00:00:28
with Assisted Living make sure you go and grab the free under writing calculator at Assisted Living investing. net it'll pop right up for you go grab that it will kind of go through that process and see if you have a profitable opportunity in front of you or not Assisted Living investing. net now let's get into the topic of today's video we're going to be talking about policies and procedures for your assisted living facility how to build them how how are you going to put all of this together
00:00:51
it's is something that you know we mentioned in a previous video about how to get licensing that policies and procedures are going to be the most difficult part of the entire process of getting your life license so you can operate your Assisted Living business so what exactly are policies and procedures if you've been looking at assisted living for any amount of time you have probably heard about policies and procedures and you probably have heard people like me say man it's the most
00:01:15
difficult thing that you're going to have to do to put those all together your policies and procedures are really the backbone of your business they that's your manual on how you're going to run the business how you going to handle every single situation they are extremely important and while they take a lot of time once you build them it's easy for you to just reference them and know what you need to do to really have a successfully running business it's going to allow you as well to be in
00:01:41
compliance with the different rules and regulations that exist inside of the industry in the healthcare industry in the long-term care industry in assisted living or if you're doing something like you want to go and do skilled nursing or something like that you're still going to need all of these things because it's going to help you stay on track it's something that you really need to have so you can actually run this business successfully and be in compliance with everything that you need to be in
00:02:05
compliance with as you get into the healthcare industry now one thing that I want to to let you know is there there's different statutes that you have to adhere to number one there are no federal requirements for assisted living it's actually not something that is regulated at a federal level everything that you do is going to be at a state level so there every state is going to have their own different kind of statutes and things like that in Colorado they have like chapter 2 chapter 7 chapter 9 in Idaho they have
00:02:34
ID APA numbers so it just kind of depends on which one your your State's going to have and what you need to follow now despite there not being a nationwide regulatory body for assisted living the states generally are going to have a lot of the same rules a lot of the same things a lot of the same wording even in their statutes that you need to follow but you need to make sure that your policies and procedures are adher aing to their specific State statutes often times when you're doing this the state is going to require that
00:03:07
you reference the correct statute that the state has uh this is something that I ran into as I was building my policies and procedures for my Idaho facility I just tried you know I've got these policies and procedures in Colorado I'm just going to send it over and they'll approve it you know it's not a big deal I have them already and they came back and said no it's not going to work we needed to reference these statutes over here this one you're missing this policy over here they actually do review these
00:03:33
and so you got to make sure that you're you're hitting all of those all of those things you got to figure out number one what the statutes are in your state and then you need to make sure that your policies and procedures adhere to those policies and proced adhere to those State statutes and that they are likely referenced in inside of this specific policy so the way that you would write that is you would say something like we you know in accordance with statute 1 234. 678 we will do this in case of emergency and
00:04:04
you kind of fill that out and then you just build out the rest of the policy or you build out the policy and at the end say this policy adheres to statute 234. 678 and that's kind of how you would build out those those policies and how you reference it you just have to do it at the beginning or the end of the policy you just want to make sure that it is referencing that so that the person that's reviewing it can see yep you're good uh you reference the correct State Statute and when you are
00:04:28
referencing that it's going to make make sure that you are in compliance with those state regulations and it's going to make it so that you don't have to worry that oh I don't know if I'm doing this right I don't know if we're following everything that we need to just follow those State statutes WR your your policies to match that and then you're going to be fine everything else from that point on is it it just becomes very easy to do is just finding those statutes and making sure that your
00:04:52
policies align with them and when they do that then boom you're good everything's fine from that point on now in addition to some of those State statutes that you have to follow those State based guidelines for the policies and procedures you're going to have some internal policies and procedures that you're going to want to implement and those ones are just as important and what the thing that I want you to realize is when you're building out your policies and procedures there's stuff
00:05:16
that you have to have like you have to hit on certain types of policies that that the state has in their statutes you absolutely have to have a policy that adheres to every state statute that they have on those things it's non-negotiable you have to do it or else you can't get your license but beyond that you can do whatever else you want you can have any type of policy you can add them whenever you want uh you don't have to like resubmit them for review when you do that it's once you have the policies
00:05:42
you're good to go and then you can add and and revise them as needed you can even take them away as long as it's not taking away the ones that are with the state statutes so you have a lot of flexibility in here as you do it and something that I really highly recommend is that you have some good internal policies that are going to allow you to run a success uccessful business some of the ones that I really want you to hit on here are there's going to be like an intake form for your residents you want
00:06:06
that to be a part of your policies and procedures you want it to be in that manual so that if you ever switch staff or or anything like that they know exactly where to go so intake manual or an intake form for your residents is a big one that you really need to have in place as you're moving forward with your Assisted Living business next is a resident assessment and that intake form and that Resident assessment they go hand inand they work really well together as you're bringing new resid
00:06:30
into your home so that's something that I want you to have as well you want to have that Resident assessment ready to go so you can see hey are they a good fit for us or not and what level of care are they going to be so that we can make sure that that we're getting into that if you are interested in actually a resident assessment and seeing what that looks like and how you would fill that out type in assessment down below would love to see how many of you are interested in learning a little bit more
00:06:53
about Resident assessments you're also going to want to have your rental agreement for your residents this one a lot of states are going to say hey it needs to be in plain language but it also needs to adhere to state regulations for renting and so you have to kind of figure out how you're going to do that while also building in some protections for yourself as the owner of the Assisted Living business um you know if a resident decides they don't want to take their meds anymore or they go and
00:07:16
do something they're not supposed to or you can't serve them because of level of care you need to have ways that you can demonstrate that you know we will discharge if they can if we cannot meet their level of care or they have XYZ issues um in the home and you want to make sure it's very well thought out and well constructed I I would work with an attorney on this if I'm being honest so that you feel confident in everything that you put together so you want to have that Resident rental agreement here
00:07:42
as well inside of your policies and procedures there's also going to just be a bunch of other paperwork that you're going to need all of these are kind of around the idea of residents coming into the facility but you want to have all of those things in your policies and procedures because that is your business it's serving those residents and making sure that you can meet their level of care needs and when you do that it just makes your business run so much more smoothly I'm also going to suggest that
00:08:06
you put in some staffing guidelines as you get into this there's going to be things like their trainings that they have to do how many hours of training what types of things do they need to go in and look at what types of videos do they need to watch what do they need to be trained on you want to kind of have a checklist here of the different types of things that your staff need to be trained on so that they can meet the needs of your residents you're also going to want to have some required
00:08:28
acknowledgements so these are papers of say I reviewed this policy I reviewed this this process here I promise you know if if you pay for this thing and I leave too fast then I I it will get taken out of my last paycheck there's a lot of things you want to have these acknowledgements that say hey we have told you about this please confirm that because then if something comes back at the end of the day and and they're coming and saying nope they didn't tell me that or they fired me I don't know
00:08:55
why it's because you have these acknowledgements in place that says hey if you don't follow this rule this regulation here uh this policy that we have internally then you will be fired and and that's what happens and so if you ever run into an issue with unemployment or anything like that you can take the policy you can hand it to them and say look they signed it they said they would not do this or if they did this that they would be fired and then it gives you a case there so you just want to have those things in place
00:09:21
as well some of those acknowledgements that they're going to sign for you and again general paperwork just a lot of other things that you want to have in place you can get online actually you know what a really good place is to find solid policies and procedures is Pinterest so that's like a secret if you got this far in the video make sure you like it number one but comment Pinterest down below because I'd love to just like a test here if just type in Pinterest if if you if you got to this point in the
00:09:48
video but that's just like a little tiny hint for you you actually find really good information on Pinterest okay so we talked about a lot of the stuff that you need to be putting into your policies and procedures now let's talk a little bit about the process of actually getting it approved so we talked about in a previous video the the entire the idea of getting your facility license and everything that you go through there and one of those things that you have to hand in with the application is your
00:10:09
policies and procedures so you're going to hand that in when you turn in the application you're going to give everything to them they're going to review it after they get that the the licensing body once they receive that policies and procedures you're going to wait and let them review it um at some point they will come back and say yep it looks good or no we need to make some changes so I I want to be careful I think there's a lot of great people out there that can help you build policies
00:10:36
and procedures but I also think that if you want to put in The Sweat Equity to do this you can build them yourself then you can send it to the state and they will work with you and then you don't have to pay anybody for it you have to do a lot more work that way you really do but you can make sure that it's it's in accordance with what they need you're developing relationships with the state for future opportunities and things down the line so work closely with the state to get the policies and procedures in
00:11:02
place they're going to help you make sure that you are meeting all of those requirements and everything is how you need it to be the other thing is as I mentioned you can pay for these so typically I I see anywhere from like a th000 to $2,000 $2500 for somebody to build the policies and procedures for you there's websites out there actually know a few so if you're in my Mastermind program you can go apply for that by the way at Alim mastermind.com application I can develop relationships help you
00:11:30
develop some relationships there to help you build out some of your policies and procedures and other resources and things like that so go check out the program but there are people that can build out these policies and procedures for you they make sure that you are that everything's good to go that you're hitting all of the state statutes and everything like that and it can reduce the amount of time that you put into this now what would I do if I were doing this again I would absolutely pay for
00:11:54
policies and procedures it was stressful for us to put ours together Colorado was super easy for us we just got the previous owner policies and procedures we sent them off they approved it like I don't honestly don't think they looked at them because it was like within two days it's the simplest process Idaho definitely looked at them because I had to work with them directly for about a month to get everything in place and what I learned is that's kind of tedious and boring and I would rather pay
00:12:20
somebody a chunk of money to build me my policies and procedure so I have them ready to go and I can just submit them so you can do whatever you want to do look at your budget see what you can figure out I personally if I if I were to do this again from the beginning I would pay somebody to build my policies and procedures again in The Mastermind program I I can help you build out some relationships there Alim mastermind.com application if you'd like to apply for that all right so to recap this video
00:12:47
we've been talking about a lot about the whole policy and procedure process and if you like this video please give it a thumbs up like the video subscribe ring the bell as well so you get notified whenever we put out this content we do content on Tuesdays and long form stuff on Thursdays uh and I love getting out and helping people out so make sure that you are subscrib and ringing the bell so you get notified when we put out this and and like the video too right but what we talked about just to recap we've
00:13:10
been talking about policies and procedures everything that you need to do to get those policies and procedures in place including just understanding exactly what your policies and procedures are we talked about how to write those policies and procedures to make sure you're meeting the specific State statutes some of the the ones that are required also the extra ones for residents and staff those typ types of things that you're going to want to have as well as you get into that how to work
00:13:33
with the state as you get to that point in the process and then also if you should hire out and pay somebody to do this we talked about all of that here in the video I hope this has been helpful and as you're going through this process again I want to remind you to go apply to The Mastermind program if you feel like you need some health Alim mastermind.com application but does residential Assisted Living sound interesting to you but you don't know how to get started at Assisted Living investing I'm here to
00:13:57
help beginners like you launch their Assisted Living business in the next 12 months I love doing this and I want to remind you that you can do it it doesn't take a lot just a little bit keep going keep making progress step by step by step and I promise you that if you do and you're consistent and persistent you're going to be successful thanks for watching and have a great day [Music]
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