The Administrator: Your Assisted Living Home’s Secret Superpower
Nov 19, 2025
Running an assisted living home is about care, love, and systems that work. But one person ties it all together: the administrator. They are the real backbone of your assisted living facility.
This guide shows what an administrator does, why they matter, and how to set them up to be successful. Let’s dive in!
Check out this video, too:
Why the Administrator Matters
A great administrator keeps the home safe, compliant, and full of joy. They make sure staff know what to do, residents receive the right care, and families feel heard. When the administrator does their job well, the whole home runs smoothly.
1) Work Environment & Compliance
An administrator needs a quiet, private space to do office work. They handle a lot of paperwork: care plans, charts, medical files, and reports. This space helps protect private information and keeps things organized.
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Give them an office or nook with a desk and a lockable file cabinet.
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This space helps stay compliant with HIPAA and state rules.
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When paperwork is ready, surveys and inspections are easier.
Having a proper office also helps the administrator balance office work with time on the floor. They can step out to talk to staff or residents, then return to finish important records. It keeps everything tidy and safe. ✍️🔒
2) Managing Operations & Staff
This is the biggest part of the job. Administrators hire, train, schedule, and lead caregivers. They also:
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Create staff schedules and run team meetings.
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Manage the budget and order supplies (toiletries, meds, food).
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Coordinate food shopping and transportation.
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Step in as caregiver when needed.
Delegation is key. The administrator can share tasks with a lead caregiver, but they hold the responsibility. Burnout is a real risk. Owners need to support their administrators with enough staff and resources.
If an admin gets burned out, the home suffers. So treat them well. 🙌
3) The Connector: Families, Staff, Community, Owners
The administrator is the main bridge for everyone. They speak with residents, families, staff, vendors, and owners.
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They handle complaints and calm upset family members.
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They keep everyone informed and solve small problems before they grow.
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They hire residents who fit the home’s culture and handle sensitive moves with care.
A strong administrator is an excellent communicator. They smooth out conflicts and protect the home’s culture. When the admin does a great job, families feel calm and staff feel proud. That leads to better care and more referrals.
Building & Protecting Culture
Culture is not built by accident. The administrator hires the right people, trains them, and models how to treat residents. This means:
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Choosing staff who match your vision.
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Vetting new residents so they fit the home’s values.
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Moving someone out gently if they harm the culture.
Never rush to fill beds if a resident is not a fit. A strong culture keeps staff and families happy — and makes the home thrive. 🌟
Practical Tools & Tips for Owners
If you own a home, help your administrator succeed:
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Provide a private office space.
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Set a clear budget and reporting rules.
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Use bulk suppliers (Costco, Sam’s Club) or vendor services for supplies and food.
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Offer payroll and HR tools to ease admin work.
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Give time off and backup staff to avoid burnout.
If you hire an admin, ask them about conflict stories. A good admin will tell a strong story of how they handled a tough family or staff issue. That shows skill and heart. 🎯
What an Administrator Actually Does — Quick List
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Keeps records and stays compliant
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Hires, trains, and schedules staff
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Orders supplies and food
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Coordinates transport and activities
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Steps in as caregiver when needed
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Talks with families and calms conflicts
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Builds and protects culture
They are the glue. They keep the home safe, compliant, and loving. 🩺❤️
Final Thought
An administrator is the backbone of your assisted living home. Give them the tools, space, and support they need. Pay attention to burnout. Hire people who fit your culture. Do these things and your home will run well, your residents will be happier, and your staff will stay.
Want Help Building Your Team & Plan?
Download our free Business Plan Checklist to build the right foundation for hiring, budgeting, and operations. It’s the first step in the five-phase process to launch a great assisted living business.
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Show full transcript 👇
Transcript
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Today we're talking about one of the most important roles in the entire assisted living business, the facility administrator. What do they do? What does a day in the life look like? So, if you're interested, stick around for today's video. Hey friend, I'm Brandon Gustafson. I help first-time assisted living entrepreneurs launch profitable, purpose-driven businesses in the next 12 months, creating prosperity, purpose, and peace in their lives. Make sure you get over to assisted living investing and stick
00:00:30 - 00:01:22
around until the end of the video. I've got a special invitation for you to help you start your assisted living journey. All right, let's dive in. Today, we're going to be talking about how the administrator is the backbone of your assisted living facility. And I have three main things that they are going to do for you. So, let's let's dive into that. Number one, the work environment and and compliance. I want to kind of explain this exactly what it looks like for an assisted living administrator to
00:00:56 - 00:01:48
do their work, what that day-to-day is is going to look like and that work environment, what it's going to be. So, number one, they generally are going to have some kind of a dedicated office space in the facility. They're going to have somewhere where they can go, they can do the paperwork. And the reason why you need this is there's a lot of paperwork that is involved in this world of assisted living. and your administrator is the person that's going to handle all of that. So, it's not
00:01:22 - 00:02:15
necessarily a deal breakaker if you don't have that office, but I would say as as much as you can as you're trying to launch your assisted living business, you should be trying to get that have that space in your facility with a desk and like a filing cabinet, you need some kind of space where they can go. They can do that paperwork. They can sit down. They can spread it out. They can make sure everything is filed correctly. because when they do reporting, when you have a survey come and somebody needs to
00:01:48 - 00:02:43
look and see what's going on, they're going to need to have all of that ready to go. And if they don't have a space where they can do this work, it's going to make it really hard. Um, plus there's sensitive documents in here. They're looking at care plans and charts and medical information. And so, the more that you can have this kind of separated and in a place where you can lock down that information, the better off you're going to be. highly recommend that you try to find some space like that inside
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of your home. Uh it does not need to be a huge room. It could be maybe a smaller bedroom or like a large closet even that could work for you. I know a lot of you watching this are doing residential facilities, so it might be hard to find that. So, it doesn't need to be this huge space. The bigger the better. Um it makes it a lot more comfortable for the administrator, but you are going to need to have some space where they can do some of that work and make sure that they are meeting the care needs of of
00:02:40 - 00:03:32
the residents. Doing this is also going to help ensure that you stay in compliance with HIPPA regulations and state regulations. Making sure you have all those things tracked. So, creating a better spot for you to be able to do all of this is just going to make your life a whole lot easier. Also, having that space inside of the home, having an office space is going to allow your administrator to really balance the office work that they need to do with the daily interactions that they're going to be having with staff and
00:03:06 - 00:03:57
residents. The administrator will need to be working the floor. they're going to have to be working and caring for the residents. It's just part of their job. But it's going to help them out a lot if you have a dedicated space where they can just kind of, okay, I'm in my office. I'm working on my stuff right now. And people know, hey, I can still go access the administrator. I can still go ask questions if I have them. But when they're in the office, they're working on things. And I I probably
00:03:32 - 00:04:18
should try to not bother them so they can get their work done. So that's why you're going to want to have an office space. Highly recommend that you have that. and and it's going to help just make your life easier, make the job of your administrator a whole lot easier as well as they work to stay compliant. The next thing that I want to talk to you about is managing operations and staff. This is a huge part of what the administrator is going to do in the facility. So, they're going to be hiring
00:03:54 - 00:04:41
and training and managing all of the caregivers. They can delegate that out to maybe a lead caregiver or an assisted administrator, but they are responsible for making sure people are hired, that they're trained, and that they're managed correctly, especially like setting out times and things for when people the shifts that people are going to be working. They're going to be in charge of all that. So, it's a big piece of the work that they are doing. So, you want to make sure that you're supporting
00:04:18 - 00:05:01
them in that. The administrator is also going to need to create schedules. They're going to have to run staff meetings. They're going to have to manage a budget. So, for you that are watching this and you're going to try to manage this remotely or you want to hire an administrator and do all the work for you, you should be setting a budget for them to stay within. Give them some guidance so that things don't get out of hand. So, you want to make sure that you're doing that. They'll need to order
00:04:40 - 00:05:31
supplies. Residents are going to need some help. They're going to need supplies, whether it's, you know, toilet paper or it could be other medical supplies, medications, diapers, any number of things. There's so many different types of supplies that need to go into managing a care home um and an assisted living facility. Your administrator is going to be the one that is in charge of ordering all of that stuff because they know what's going on. They can see in the charts what needs to happen and what residents
00:05:05 - 00:05:58
need. And so you want to make sure that they have access to doing something like that. We actually use McKessen for that to buy supplies, but you can buy them at local grocery store, Sam's Club, Costco. You can get them in a lot of different places. Uh, so that's something that you should be doing as well. Ordering supplies, uh, coordinating food. We use Walmart Plus for our food, but using large club options, Sam's Club, again, Costco, you're going to be buying a lot of food, so it's a great opportunity for
00:05:31 - 00:06:18
you to use those types of things. Um, save money. Maybe you build a relationship with a local ger that can also save you money. So, that's something else you might want to look into as you get going with this. They'll need to be coordinating transportation and activities. A lot of these things they're in charge of. They don't have to do all of it, but they they need to make sure it gets done. They can delegate these things. I mentioned that before. Delegation is huge because the
00:05:55 - 00:06:45
responsibilities of an administrator are just they're enormous and there's a lot that goes into it. Delegation is something that's super important. If you'd like to learn a little bit more about what delegation is, how you can do that in assisted living, type delegation down below and I'll create a video for you that's specifically on that topic. In addition to all of that, something else they're going to have to do is probably step in and be a caregiver inside of the facility. Uh they're
00:06:20 - 00:07:09
always on call and they're always going to need to be there to step in and take over a shift and make sure that things are getting across the finish line. It's a huge part of what they do. So if you're short staffed, they'll need to do that. For a person that is operating, you need to be aware of this as well because that can lead to burnout. And so you want to make sure that your people are not getting burnt out and that they are still feeling comfortable and confident in their work. If they need
00:06:44 - 00:07:40
more resources to hire more people, then as an owner, you should be trying to provide those types of resources to help them um get the the support that they need to make sure that that everything is great. We've actually had that happen in our facilities where we've had an administrator get so just burnt out from trying to work and serve the residents and do all of the responsibilities as an administrator that they got burned out and they ended up leaving us. This actually happened. You know, I've got a
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story for you on that. If you would like to learn more about it, type Christmas down below because this happened during Christmas time and I I'd love to share the story with you. So, if you are interested in hearing a little bit more about that story and just kind of the heartache that that we went through as we were trying to do that, type in Christmas down below. But I also want to talk to you about how it can impact an administrator. So, it's something that you got to be aware of it because it can
00:07:38 - 00:08:25
really lead to burnout. It can put you in a bad situation. So, I'd love to share a story with you. Type in Christmas down below and if I get a 100 comments that say Christmas, we will share that story with you. And the third thing that I want to point out that an administrator does is they have to be a bridge between all of the people that they're dealing with. Administrators work with a lot of people. They they just work with a ton of different people inside of the facility. They are a
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liazison between the residents, the families, the staff, the community, the ownership group. They are kind of this this center point of contact. And you have to you need to have somebody in that position that is an incredible communicator because of all of the people that they have to interact with. It's hard. It's a hard job and but it's something that you need to make sure that you have in place. Um if you're going to be an administrator and if you're going to hire an administrator,
00:08:26 - 00:09:23
you want to make sure that you have somebody that is an incredible communicator. It makes the job so much easier. It makes your life as an owner so much easier as well. That person is just this point of contact that has an incredible amount of knowledge and they make everything run smoothly. If you have a good administrator in place, they are going to handle all of the complaints as well that come in. They smooth out conflicts. This is a question that we often ask our administrators when we are hiring them is tell me a
00:08:54 - 00:09:49
point, tell me a story, tell me a situation where you dealt with a point of friction when you dealt with an angry family member. tell us about something that happened in in that situation. And a good administrator will have a great story because there is a story there. I promise you, there are always stories where somebody's upset and you want to make sure you have somebody that knows how to handle that conflict and knows how to account for it to how to adjust to it and how to handle all of the
00:09:22 - 00:10:11
personalities that go into that. If you'd like to learn more about the hiring process of hiring an administrator, type hire down below and we can do a video for you on that as well. Now, another thing that your administrator is going to do is they build and protect the culture of the facility. They are the person that is like uh they're hiring all the people, they're bringing in the residents, they are building the culture. So, you want to make sure as an owner, if you're doing this and and you're hiring an
00:09:47 - 00:10:36
administrator, you want to make sure that you have somebody that is aligned with the culture that you want to build inside of your facility because that administrator is the person that is there and creating that culture. So, you want to make sure you have that person in place. It's really important for you to have that. Now, if you're an administrator, you need to realize that you have a lot of power in how you're going to create this this kind of culture and and help people along the
00:10:10 - 00:11:01
path to being comfortable and having a good experience inside of the assisted living facility. Really important for you to do that. And in that vein, your administrator, they need to do a really solid vetting process to make sure that they are bringing in the right type of residence that's not going to rock the boat. and they're going to make sure that you have all of the needs that are met, that they're not going to just kind of create this situation where people are uncomfortable because you have a bad
00:10:36 - 00:11:24
resident. And if a bad resident is brought in, and this has happened to us before, you bring somebody in that just isn't a good fit for the culture, that you're able to move them out of the facility in a loving and caring way. So, you want to make sure that you're doing that. It's hard. It's hard to have those conversations. A lot of people look really hard to find the right assisted living facility, and we hope that's who they are. But it is so much more important for you to have a good culture
00:11:00 - 00:11:46
in your facility than to fill the beds. So, don't just rush into this and just fill the beds just cuz you feel like you need the money. Make sure it's a good fit. Make sure it's building the culture that you want inside of your home. Uh that it aligns with where you want to go. And you're going to be a lot more successful and a lot happier as an owner, as an operator, as an administrator in the facility. just gonna make your life a whole lot easier. So, make sure you're vetting those
00:11:23 - 00:12:09
people. That's something that the administrator is going to do. So, as you can see, there's a lot that goes into this for the administrator. There's this work environment where they need to have this incredible place to work and do all these things so that you can stay in compliance. They are going to be managing all of the operations and the staff. It's a huge part of what they do to make sure that you are successful. And they are also going to be bridging the gap between all of the people that
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are involved there. So, you want to make sure that you're giving them the resources there because they have a lot to deal with. Okay, that's what an administrator does. Um, I mentioned at the start of the video that I have a special invitation for you. I'm hosting a live challenge that's coming up soon. I would love to help you build a roadmap to start your assisted living business. So, go check out roadmapchallenge.com for more details on our next challenge. It's coming up soon. So, make sure you
00:12:11 - 00:12:52
go check that out. I would love to have you in there. It's live. It's a 5-day event. would love to help you out as you're trying to get into this because I hear you. You don't know how to get started. You need help with funding, licensing is confusing. We cover all of that in the challenge. So, go check it out. roadmapchallenge.com. Now, if you found this video to be helpful, make sure you like the video, subscribe, and ring the bell as well so you get notified every time we put out
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content like this. We go live on Tuesdays and put content out on Thursdays to help you launch your assisted living business. Curious about assisted living? At Assisted Living Investing, I help first-time assisted living entrepreneurs launch profitable, purpose-driven businesses in 12 months, creating prosperity, purpose, and peace in their lives. And remember, it does not take a lot. Just a little bit. Just keep going step by step by step. And I promise you, if you do, and you are consistent and persistent, you are going
00:12:56 - 00:13:11
to be successful. Thanks for watching and have a great day. [Music]
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