How we work
Every score, badge, and notice on Placet reflects a deliberate choice about data sourcing and transparency. This section explains how we classify facilities, where our data comes from, and — critically — what we cannot tell you.
Every facility on Placet is assigned one of four transparency modes, shown as a badge on the facility profile. The mode tells you what kind of oversight the facility operates under and how much public data is available.
Medicare- and Medicaid-certified Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNFs) report to the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. CMS publishes inspection results, deficiency citations, staffing hours via Payroll-Based Journal (PBJ), civil monetary penalties, and quality measures. This is the most complete public data set available for any care setting.
Some facilities include both a federally-certified SNF and a state-regulated long-term care setting — such as an Assisted Living Facility or CCRC — under the same operator and address. We call these dual-status campuses because federal oversight discipline and operator accountability can extend across the whole campus, even though only the SNF portion has public CMS data.
Assisted Living Facilities, Residential Care Homes, and most Memory Care communities are licensed at the state level. They do not report to CMS and are not included in Care Compare. How much public data exists depends on each state's disclosure laws — some states publish inspection reports and complaint histories; others publish almost nothing.
In some states, reliable inspection or quality data is simply not publicly available for non-SNF care settings. Rather than present a misleadingly thin profile, we show an explicit notice and direct families to the state ombudsman, in-person visits, and other resources. We believe saying "we don't know" is more honest than showing silence.
A state-by-state breakdown of which facility types are covered, what public data exists, and where the gaps are.
Why entrance fees are at risk in Continuing Care Retirement Communities, how we score liquidity and coverage ratios, and what families should ask before signing a contract.