Nursing Homes vs. Assisted Living: What’s the Difference?
Jul 01, 2025
Ever wondered what the real difference is between a nursing home and an assisted living facility?
You’re not alone! A lot of people mix them up or just call everything a “nursing home.”
In today’s post, we’re breaking it all down for you — simple, clear, and concise. Let’s go!
Check out this video, too:
🏡 Why This Matters
If you’re thinking about investing in senior living, opening your own care home, or just curious about the industry, you need to know the difference between:
✅ Independent living
✅ Assisted living
✅ Nursing homes (also called skilled nursing facilities or “SNFs”)
Understanding these helps you:
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Pick the right business model
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Know the level of care you can provide
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Avoid licensing or staffing mistakes
🛑 Step 1: Understand the Continuum of Care
In senior living, care needs increase over time. Here’s the quick ladder:
1️⃣ Independent Living
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No real care, just housing and maybe meal or laundry services
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Residents are mostly self-sufficient
2️⃣ Assisted Living
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Help with activities of daily living (ADLs)
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Things like dressing, bathing, medication reminders, meal prep
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Feels like an apartment or cozy home setting
3️⃣ Nursing Homes (Skilled Nursing Facilities)
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24/7, hands-on medical care
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Help with everything: eating, showering, getting out of bed
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Often two-person lifts and medical equipment
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Feels more clinical, closer to hospital-level care
🔍 Step 2: Know the Big Differences
Here’s what really separates assisted living from nursing homes:
| Category | Assisted Living | Nursing Home |
|---|---|---|
| Care Level | Help with some tasks (ADLs) | 24-hour medical & personal care |
| Resident Needs | Semi-independent, needs occasional assistance | High medical needs, full assistance |
| Staff Requirements | Caregivers, med techs (varies by state) | Licensed nurses, CNAs, medical staff |
| Living Style | Apartment or home-like | Clinical, hospital-like, often shared rooms |
| Licensing | Assisted living license | Skilled nursing facility license |
| Cost & Reimbursement | Mostly private pay | Often Medicaid/Medicare funded |
💡 Step 3: Which One Should You Invest In?
Here’s what to consider:
✔ Assisted Living Pros
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Lower overhead
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Simpler operations
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More flexibility in services
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Great for residential home conversions
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More stable long-term residents
⚠ Assisted Living Challenges
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You cannot handle high-care or medical patients
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Need strong systems for ADLs, meds, meals
✔ Nursing Home Pros
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Higher reimbursement (often via Medicaid/Medicare)
⚠ Nursing Home Challenges
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Heavier regulations
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Medical staffing needs
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More complex insurance billing
- Residents are generally closer to death and there's more turnover
✨ Pro Tips for Future Owners
✅ If you want simpler operations, start with assisted living.
✅ If you’re okay with heavy medical regulations and more resident turnover, explore nursing homes.
✅ Always research your state’s licensing laws — they are different for each level of care.
✅ Want to test the waters? Residential assisted living (RAL) is a great entry point.
Next Steps: Take Action Today!
🚀 Want to launch your assisted living business in the next 12 months?
✅ Step 1: Download the Business Plan Checklist to start planning.
✅ Step 2: Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
✅ Step 3: Follow this guide, take action, and bring your vision to life!
Got questions? Drop them in the comments below! ⬇️
Show full transcript 👇
Transcript
00:00:00 - 00:01:06
off the year with a bang I hope you enjoyed the holidays and I took some time off uh to be with family which was great um and I hope you got to do something similar so today uh we're going to be getting into a fun topic something that I've been people have been asking me about a little bit on on the channel in comments and things like that and they are kind of these comparison uh of things in the senior living industry so I want to get into that today we're going to be talking about nursing homes versus assisted
00:00:32 - 00:01:26
living and which of those is the route that you should go uh what's the difference um people often will just say nursing homes when they mean assisted leing we're going to talk a little bit about the difference in those two today so you can kind of just have a better understanding of of what it is that you're getting into before we jump into that topic though I wanted to remind you to get over to the website we'll have a link down below to get this the business plan checklist and you can go over to
00:00:59 - 00:02:02
assisted living investing. netb checklist in order to get that uh just a quick free easy guide for you to have and use as you are starting your investment Journey so get over to Assisted Living investing. netb checklist we'll be doing it on the ticker here below and then also a link in the description so make sure you get over to that uh give you a little bit of background oops did the wrong thing there let's click up here oh this one okay A little bit of background on me who I am why I'm qualified to kind of
00:01:30 - 00:02:28
teach you um about this information so uh I own and operate two assisted living facilities and I own I operate them out of state I live in in Salt Lake in Utah I operate one in Colorado Springs and one in NAA Idaho which is a suburb suburb of boisee um I've secured over one and a half million in SBA funding as well so I know the process I'm very familiar with it and can help you as well through through that process and the other thing that I don't talk a lot about and this is specifically why kind
00:02:00 - 00:02:59
of qualifies me to talk about the difference here in these is I have a master's degree in healthcare administration so I I have gone to school for a lot of this spent a lot of time and money uh getting the education I have a really good understanding sound understanding of the healthcare industry as a whole and as I've Dove a lot more into senior living can kind of explain those things so you have questions if you're here make sure you comment them um down below and also if you're new type in newbie and if you've been here
00:02:29 - 00:03:29
for a while you have your own facility type in operator I'd love to see who is watching these videos as well make sure you type in those questions though so I can get to those here at the end after I get through this topic now let's talk about the senior living industry I've T I've had a video on this um previously and there's kind of four sections here that you could kind of go through and and and just the the Continuum of Care that people are in as they are in the senior living space number one is
00:02:59 - 00:04:03
independent living or a group home or something along those lines these are people that often don't need a ton of care but they do do need a level of um maybe a little bit of direction or they they need some help getting housing Independent Living is um actually you are not allowed to provide any certain level of care but maybe you have facilities at the house like a laundry facility or something along those lines uh that is independent living from there you bump up and you would be going into kind of a care home or an assisted
00:03:31 - 00:04:28
living facility and there's a difference between those two and we've talked about that before um but a lot of it at its core is the same level of care you're helping people with activities of daily living and people that need some assistance with with a few things um so that's the next level of care and then above that is nursing homes you might hear them referred to as skilled nursing facilities or if you're really deep into the healthcare industry there's an acronym for it SNF and we just call them
00:04:00 - 00:05:01
sniffs um so that's a Skilled Nursing Facility but those are all the same nursing home skilled nursing uh kind of falls into that so you've got these three um big sections independent up to Assisted Living care home and then you're getting you're getting into nursing homes and we're going to talk a little bit about hospice I think in a future video but if you're curious about hospice just comment down below hospice that will let me know that you're interested in that topic um and I can show you how hospice kind of fits into
00:04:30 - 00:05:26
this entire Continuum of Care because it is is separate I've actually worked on contracts in my full-time job around hospice so I've got a a decent level of understanding of what that is how it works and how it impacts things here in the senior living um space now let's jump over into assisted living not sure why the picture is not showing up there but there is a picture on this one that's fine um Assisted Living so what happens in this level of care with assisted living assisted living is as I
00:04:58 - 00:06:06
mentioned assistance with activities of daily living that's the big thing that happens here in Assisted Living it's the big thing that differentiates assisted living from nursing homes is there's assistance with with those activities of daily living nursing homes will get to this there's a lot more care and a lot more doing it for you but assistance with activities of daily living this could be things like uh dressing eating meal prep uh medication management uh toileting those types of things it's
00:05:31 - 00:06:36
people need help with those and so we as an assisted living facility are providing those Services we're helping those people so that they can uh use the restroom and and have some dignity in doing that because it can feel embarrassing when when you're a resident and you have to come to the realization that you need help uh doing these things and so there's a level of of care and uh just um compassion that goes into this and so something that you want to be aware of but activities of daily living
00:06:04 - 00:07:01
assistance with those is one of the big differentiators between assisted living and nursing homes it's that level of care it's it's huge and that's what differentiates Independent Living from assisted living as well it's kind of in this sweet spot next one is your meals are often served a lot of times residents in Assisted Living are able to feed themselves but they just can't do the M Mill prep and so you're serving them and then most of the time they're eating themselves sometimes you do have
00:06:33 - 00:07:31
to do some assistance there um social activities you're you're in a home especially the homes that I have that are residential facilities or residential homes that are Assisted Living we do a lot more kind of activities and um we'll bring people in to to do stuff we'll do crafts we'll do we'll do a lot of those things that kind of work on fine motor skills and and that type of stuff it it really helps out your residence and doing that makes it feel more like like a home which is what you want to do especially as a
00:07:02 - 00:08:11
residential facility and then apartment style living so this could be something uh in a residential setting a residential assisted living home uh you have this kind of it's a quasi apartment it's much more of a home F it's it's much more like that and if you get into bigger assisted living facilities it feels kind of like an apartment you have a studio um and and it just feels more more um normal I would say um and it makes you feel like you're at home and yeah you're you're living here you're you're kind of
00:07:37 - 00:08:35
independent you need a little bit of help that's what assisted living is there's not not a huge difference between normal living and assisted living you just need help with a few things that's the the big differentiator here with assisted living now let's get into nursing homes so nursing homes is extensive 24-hour car you have to have when Assisted Living you have to have somebody there 24 hours a day 24/7 have to be available to help and assist where needed somebody needs to go to the bathroom at 3 in the morning you need
00:08:06 - 00:09:07
somebody there to help them go to the bathroom in the nursing homes you have somebody that is there and it's it's much more extensive much more in-depth much more we're actually doing these things for you um we are helping you not only make the meals but we are helping you eat we are showering you everything we're doing all of the things that that you need to do in a shower rather than helping you kind of be stable um that you might do an assisted living so this is a big difference you are are much
00:08:36 - 00:09:42
more in-depth and much more Hands-On in your care in a nursing home because the residents that live there they need that they need this level of care that uh is beyond what you can offer at an assisted liming so we often see this in our facility in our homes where uh we have somebody that needs care they need constant hair they need two person lift um to to get them up because they are not mobile at all that level of care is something that we're just not able to provide at our assisted living homes and
00:09:09 - 00:10:14
so we would refer them out to a nursing home a Skilled Nursing Facility because they need that level of care they need that extra just ah here we go you're getting somebody up there you're doing a lot more meal assistance you're doing you probably have a few more increased safety features and that could be things like to help them out with Falls maybe you have more railings in in the home in a nursing home maybe you have something like softer floors or um locked doors so people can't can't get out which you can
00:09:42 - 00:10:43
see in memory care facilities in the assisted living world but those types of things is what you're going to see there and the style of living is a little bit more clinical so when you think Assisted Living I am guessing that the majority of you when you think about it you are actually thinking about a nurse nursing home nursing homes are much more they're closer to end of life U they're people that need a lot more help assisted living is much more apartment normal style living you just need help with
00:10:12 - 00:11:17
things and so that's a huge differentiator there uh and there's a lot of confusion in the industry about this there's a lot of confusion that thinks oh nursing homes that's everything and in reality there is so much in in the Continuum of Care um from in from needing a little bit of assistance needing a place to stay all the way up to end of lifeare and there's a lot that goes into that and a lot that you need to understand as you get into I'd love to hear some of your questions about this what are some of the things
00:10:44 - 00:11:42
that that you are wondering about the differences there the other thing I would say is there's administrators at both of these types of facilities and a lot of the work they do is actually pretty similar you're staying up to date with regulations you're staying up to date in in doing continuing education courses and and things along those lines and so there's there's quite a bit that is similar but it is a different license um it's a different um license type license number so it's not exactly the
00:11:14 - 00:12:17
same there's a lot that goes into actually one of my my um most viewed videos on my channel is uh the day in the life of an assisted living facility administrator but I can see the Search terms and a lot of that is nursing home administrator um which is really interesting to me but there's there's a lot of crossover there between the two they do a lot of the same type of work it's just uh a slightly different type of license so something for you to kind of keep in mind if you are in this because you're trying to figure out the
00:11:45 - 00:12:43
difference between those two and what you want to do for work there's a slight difference there you want to be aware of what that is the difference is what type of setting are you going to be more comfortable working in um if you're an owner which one are you going to be more comfortable owning because it is it's different it's a different population that you are working now let's talk a little bit about nurses and this is a again a very big differentiator between assisted living and nursing homes so in
00:12:14 - 00:13:16
Assisted Living you need to have some level of of nursing there but they are often times kind of part-time so at our our homes we have contracted out with nurses an RN who comes in once a week for 5 to 10 hours a week um maybe twice a week but they total about 5 to 10 hours a week in our home and they will come in and they'll do assessments on our on our residents they'll make sure that they have the things that they need they communicate to the doctor they talk to the administrator they do a lot of
00:12:45 - 00:13:50
partnering there and then they're giving direction they will um they will delegate Med pass to our caregivers so the caregivers who are Med certified can pass medications that's delegated by the RN who goes through a process and makes sure that she that the nurse is comfortable delegating that to the caregivers um so that's kind of the level that that goes into that whereas if you get into a nursing home there's a lot more nurse coverage they because your residents need a higher level of care they need a little bit more
00:13:18 - 00:14:21
training in Assisted Living we have caregivers and and basically they're helping out with those activities of daily living and that's about it um there there's a little bit more they're doing but its core that's the work that they do whereas in a nursing home uh is I worked in a nursing homee previously and I was a CNA uh which is a certified nurse's assistant and uh to do that I was able to do things like taking vitals and uh so blood pressure and um heart rate and and those types of things um
00:13:50 - 00:14:48
and that's not something a lot of our caregivers are doing at the assisted living home um they will if they need to but that's not the level of training that they have necessarily they're there kind of working and caring for for those residents whereas in a nursing home you got this level of care that is just a little bit higher and they're providing that care for the residents um helping out um with with various things a lot of the same caregiver type duties that just a little bit more highly trained um is
00:14:19 - 00:15:26
what you would do so if you're a business owner you're watching this um the difference there is assisted living is probably going to be a little bit lower um lower range as it as it pertains to um the amount of money that it takes for you to operate specifically with your wages because um it's a lower level of um a lower level of Education that goes into it whereas a as a as a nursing home you're probably going to need CNAs you're going to need a higher level of Education that goes into that to run your business so I would love to
00:14:53 - 00:15:50
hear from you if there's any questions about any of these things uh anything specific about uh about nursing homes about assisted living facilities I love kind of talking about this educating you around this part of the industry because it's it's difficult like there's just a lot of questions that go into it and what is right what is wrong um and and how how is that all going to work so uh make sure you type those questions in uh I'll get to them in a future video as well make sure you like the video
00:15:21 - 00:16:26
subscribe and ring the bell as well so you get notified every time we go live on these we missed the week of Christmas cuz I was out with them uh but we are planning to to kick that back into gear um here in 2024 excited to do that make sure you also get over to the website um at Assisted Living investing. netb checklist to get the business planning checklist um you can get our free underwriting calculator as well if you get over to Assisted Living investing. net it'll pop up for you and super excited uh got a big announcement
00:15:53 - 00:16:50
coming next week so make sure you are tuned in um to the channel make sure get on the email list um so you get notified once I get that that big announcement coming out uh something a lot of you have been waiting for I'm super excited to finally have it out uh if you have been watching me for a while you probably know what it is but make sure you get subscribed and uh we will see you in the next one thanks for watching and have a great day happy New Year and I'll see you next time
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