First State Inspection: When to Expect It for Your Assisted Living Facility
Sep 20, 2024
Opening an assisted living facility provides its own challenges, but one of the most nerve-racking experiences for new owners is generally the initial state inspection. This critical assessment confirms that your facility satisfies all the criteria required to provide safe and effective care to residents. Understanding when to expect this inspection and what it will entail is critical for your peace of mind and the success of your business.
In this blog post, we will review the intricacies of the initial state inspection process. By the end, you will thoroughly understand the timeframe and requirements, allowing you to feel prepared and confident. Whether you're in the early phases of planning or about to open your doors, this information will help you ensure that your facility is compliant and ready to deliver quality care.
Check out the video, too:
Preliminary Inspections Before Operations Begin
Before your facility can officially open, you may need to conduct a few inspections as part of the licensing procedure. These inspections vary by state but typically include visits by the fire department, city zoning, and health agencies.
The fire department's inspection is especially significant. If you're opening a new building, the fire marshal will examine ADA compliance, making sure your hallways and doorways are wide enough, and your bathrooms are accessible, and assess the need for a fire suppression system. Existing facilities are subject to less severe inspections as you'll get grandfathered into old rules. The fire marshal will also inspect your fire suppression system and ensure maximum occupancy compliance.
City zoning and planning inspections are also necessary, particularly for new facilities or large repairs. This inspection verifies that your facility follows local zoning requirements. If rezoning is required, the city will inspect the property to ensure compliance with the new regulations. This is all necessary so you can obtain your certificate of occupancy, which is required for your facility licensing process.
The health department may inspect your facility to ensure it fulfills health and safety regulations. However, this is optional. This inspection mainly focuses on directing and sanctioning noncompliance, especially if the facility is not operational.
The Ideal and Realistic Timeline for State Inspections
Ideally, the state would inspect your facility within its first 12 months. This initial inspection is intended to provide comments and direction, ensuring that your operations comply with state standards. The purpose is not to shut you down but to assist you in making the necessary adjustments to ensure safe and compliant operations.
However, due to continued staffing challenges aggravated by the COVID-19 epidemic, state inspections are frequently delayed beyond the optimal schedule. Based on recent experience, initial state inspections are more likely to occur between 18 and 24 months after your facility begins operations.
Preparing for Your State Inspection
To ensure that your facility is ready for a state inspection, keep all policies and procedures up to date with the most recent state requirements. Regularly evaluate and update your documentation to reflect any changes. Ensure your policies and procedures are thorough and well-documented, including staff training manuals and resident care plans. Consult with state agencies for advice; they can provide useful insights and keep you on track with compliance standards.
Final Thoughts
Understanding when your first state inspection will take place and making the necessary preparations will considerably decrease the worry and uncertainty that typically accompany this process. It's crucial to remember that these inspections are designed to help you succeed by certifying that your facility is functioning safely and efficiently.
If you found this information helpful and are ready to start your journey toward opening your own assisted living facility, download our free Business Plan Checklist to get started on the right foot.
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Show full transcript 👇
Transcript
00:00:00
hey everybody welcome back to the channel in today's video we're going to be getting into the topic of when is your first state inspection as you get started with your assisted living facility so if you're interested in learning more about that and want to learn more about the process make sure you stay tuned hey everybody I'm Brandon Gsutafson and I own and operate two assisted living facilities and I created Assisted Living investing. net to provide you with coaching that helps to start your
00:00:30
own assisted living facility welcome to Assisted Living investing and our topic for today we're going to be getting into when could you expect to have your first state inspection for your residential assisted living facility this is a topic that I see often with people as they're getting started on their journey I see this a lot in Facebook forums and and places like that they want to know when when is the state going to come and when are they going to talk to me and when are they going to uh come in and and and
00:00:59
really kind of dig in to what I'm doing here at my facility and what's it going to look like and and just that that entire process in a previous video I talked about uh state inspection that we had and a surprise state inspection I also shared some tips and tricks with you about how to create a policy and procedure on the Fly using chat GPT so I'll link those uh videos up above here both the one where I talk about our our recent surprise uh state inspection and also our are one about how to create a
00:01:31
quick policy on the fly so you can use those as you're going through this process in the event that you do have a a survey that comes in for for your for your facility now I want to talk to you first about what happens before you start operating your facility there's actually a few inspections that can come up and not necessarily state inspections by the state uh to to kind of give you your your your license or or make sure that you're operating correctly ly these inspections are coming from a few
00:02:02
different areas and they're part of your licensing process and things that you're going to have to be aware of I would say not every state is going to require these but some of them might and you want to be aware of these types of inspections that that might come up first is going to be the fire department you may have to have the fire marshall come out and this is the case if you're starting a brand new facility or you're converting a facility Fire Marshall is going to have to come out and they're
00:02:27
going to do some measurements and and things like that if you're starting something brand new they're going to want to make sure that your ADA Compliant that your hallways and your doorways are wide enough that your bathrooms are compliant with Ada standards and that you have a fire suppression system in your facility if you are purchasing an existing facility they will come in and they're not going to be nearly as strict with the the hallways and the doorways and some of those Renovations that you would have to
00:02:55
do if you're doing a a brand new build because you're going to be grandfathered and if if you are purchasing an existing facility and so you don't need to have those things but they will still come in and they're going to look at things like maximum occupancy and uh make sure that your fire suppression system is in place and that it's working as an example of this when we purchased our facility in Idaho we're going through the process and we had to have the fire marshall
00:03:19
come in and they went through and they found that you know we were licensed for 16 residents that if we wanted to be licensed for 16 residents then we were going to have to have other external facing bathroom u meaning a public restroom so we had to do a renovation we had to coordinate with the sellers and and have them do a renovation where they took one of the restrooms that was inward facing in a into a bedroom and flip it close off the door so it was no longer in there for the residents and
00:03:50
was external facing so all the residents could could use it I already had a shower I already had a toilet I already had a sink we just kind of had to flip where the door was for that so that it could be external facing and used by the rest of the the home as they were going through so that's the type of thing that you're going to need but that's an inspection that was required for us to obtain our license the next one I'm going to talk to you about is City zoning and planning so it's possible
00:04:15
especially if you're buying if you're if you're starting a brand new facility or doing kind of a renovation that you're going to have somebody from the City come out and look at the facility and and make sure that it is in compliance with the types of things that that they need it to be uh compliant with for the proper zoning of the location where you are residing so you might have to have them come out and look at it and especially if you're going to have to change the zoning if you're going to go
00:04:41
through that process you're probably going to have to have somebody from the City come out and look at that that's just another inspection that you're going to need as you get into this process again so that you can obtain your license as a part of your application process that you're going through with the with the state the State Health Department so you can get things moving along and the third one is possibly the health department it is possible that they will come out now now
00:05:06
they're not looking for specific things that you're doing wrong because you're not operating yet they if you're purchasing an existing facility they may come in and suggest some changes but they're not going to shut you down because of that and if you're doing a brand new facility they may come in and look at it and you know say oh you got to make sure that this thing is here you want to have a spot for your med cart you uh you want to make sure that uh your rooms have door doors on them or a
00:05:35
certain type of door knob or or something like that or the stairs are uh kind of in compliance if there are stairs those types of things are are what they might be looking for if they come in prelicense for you to to get things along I personally have never had the state come out and do an inspection I don't think it happens very often because they are so swamped with everything else that they have but it's possible that they're going to come out and they're going to look at at the
00:06:02
facility before you get up and running and and before you get your license so you just want to be aware so those are the three that could happen before you start your facility and we're going to talk about the ideal world uh for what would happen with the state and this is the states Ideal World uh what they are hoping to do is get out and see the facility within the first 12 months of you operating and this initial inspection is not necessarily to shut you down it's to provide you with some
00:06:29
feed feedback and guidance and make sure that you are operating correctly they want to make sure that you're doing the things that you are supposed to be doing so you can successfully run your facility that you're caring for your residents that you are keeping all the documentation in place for your staff all of those things they're going to give you that guidance and so this this initial inspection is not um unless you're doing something drastically bad they're going to be a little bit more
00:06:54
kind of slap on the wrist type things you need to make these Corrections here and you need to make them so that your in compliance uh but you know you're not going to be in big trouble for it let's just get this get this going and let's make sure that you're operating the way that you need to be it's kind of the tone of that initial inspection uh like I mentioned the state wants to come in and do this in reality though what happens at least in my experience is they aren't able to do that um at least
00:07:20
since Co and I'm going to imagine a little bit before covid but because of Co that era there still are Staffing problems at the state and and they're not able to bring in as many people as they would like to and so being short staffed getting out to do the inspections that they would like to do uh especially those initial inspections it kind of doesn't fall within that first 12 month period they in my experience are coming out between about I would say in the first 18 to 20 months is when they're going to come out so
00:07:51
between 12 and 18 or 12 and 20 months is probably the time frame realistically that you're going to be uh going to be seeing this and this is the recording of This is in 2023 so if you watch this in 3 years from now that might not be the case it could be that they are accelerating that and they are out in the first six to n months but in my experience today in 2023 they're still delayed and they're still working on getting out there and what that means I mean typically they're still going to be
00:08:19
doing that initial inspection but they may rope in a little bit more uh given you know if you've been operating for more than a year you should have a pretty good handle on what you're doing you can always reach out to the state for guidance and things like that and you want to make sure that you are in compliance with all of their regulations you want to make sure that you're following all the rules and that you're providing a good spot for your residence so if your initial inspection ends up
00:08:43
being beyond that point and you're getting into the 18 to 24 month time frame you might have a few more things that come up by way of uh little dings or Corrections that you need to make at your facility because they're kind of combining that initial inspection with a subsequent inspection they'll still be a little bit lenient with you but it's something you just want to be aware of uh do your best though to really get in there and make sure everything is in compliance make sure that you're doing
00:09:11
all that you can to follow all the rules have your policies and procedures documented make sure that you're following them and that they are referencing the correct state regulations and when the state makes updates that you are updating your policies and procedures accordingly so that when the state comes in that they're going to be able to talk to you and and say yeah it looks like you're doing exactly what we would like you to do that's excellent um here's you know these five things that we need to make
00:09:36
sure that you are correcting and doing um a little bit better than you're doing right now so those are a few of the things you know the reality there of the situation that uh as you're getting started with your assisted living facility today's video we've been talking about the licensing process and those three kind of pre inspections that you might see with the fire department sitting zoning and planning and with the health department themselves and then we talk about this Ideal World they're
00:10:01
going to come out in the first 12 months but in reality it's just probably not going to happen um at least as of the recording of this video uh they are probably going to be out a little bit closer to that 18 to 24 month Mark you just want to make sure that you are doing everything that you should be doing for you to operate your facility if you found this information helpful and you are looking at getting started on your journey to assisted living and starting to you know operate your own assisted living facility make sure you
00:10:28
get over to Assisted Living investing . net have a free calculator for you over there also I'm working right now I just finished uh working on week 11 of a 12 week course and this is going to be oh it's probably going to be close to 20 hours of content that is specific to you and helping you through this journey with 12 steps with action steps and and plans for you to implement and start working to get you started on your own assisted living facility if that sounds interesting to you make sure you get on
00:10:56
the email list now get over to Assisted Living investing. net so you are the first to know when that comes available and as of the recording of this I haven't launched this yet but I think by the time this is up there will be the business planning guide that goes into kind of that initial phase of what you need to do to get started with your assisted living facility so make sure you get over to the website sign up be on our newsletter we have uh a few different things there by way of just kind of a newsletter that gives you 12
00:11:24
action steps that mini that 12we course in a mini miniature version that's going to give you action steps it's your way for that course to come out and I I really want to help you out here in kind of coaching you on your process to obtain your own assisted living facility does residential Assisted Living sound interesting to you but you don't know how to get started at Assisted Living investing. net we're here to help you through the process start to finish and remember it doesn't take a lot just a
00:11:51
little bit keep going keep making progress step by step by step I promise that if you do you're going to be successful thanks for watching and have a great day for
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