How we rank your matches
When you take our matching quiz, we rank the licensed communities in your state that can serve your person. This page says what that ranking looks at and what it never looks at.
What we consider
- How close it is to where you are looking
- How much of the listing the community has confirmed itself
- How recently the community updated whether it has room
- How well the community’s licensed care level fits your person’s
- How you plan to pay
- The care your person’s needs call for
- The must-haves you told us about
- The size and setting you prefer
- The state’s inspection record
- Whether a nursing facility is in your insurance network, when the link you were sent names your plan
- Whether the community has a secured unit, if your person wanders
- Whether the community says it has room
- Your budget
Home health and hospice agencies
When your answers point to hospice or home health, we name agencies that serve your county, starting with the ones that fit what you told us best. For those, we consider:
- How soon a hospice can start care, when something needs to happen now
- Medicare’s star rating for the agency
- Whether a home health agency is certified by Medicare
- Whether a home health agency offers the services your person needs
- Whether the agency has a program your person’s needs call for, such as dementia care
- Whether the agency takes your insurance
Agencies that fit equally well are shown in a different order for each family, so no agency comes first just because of its name.
What never counts
The ranking never reads any of these:
- Whether a community subscribes to Latter Years, or which plan it is on
- What a community pays us for anything, including advertising
- Whether a community has claimed its listing. Claiming is free, and it is how a community confirms its answers, which is what does count
- Whether an agency subscribes to Latter Years, or pays us for anything
Unconfirmed information counts less
Some of what we show about a community comes from its own public website rather than from the community itself, and it is labeled that way. Unconfirmed information counts less in the ranking than information a community has confirmed. Confirming costs a community nothing.
The directory is not ranked
The directory is a different thing from your matches, and nothing ranks it. It lists every licensed community in the state alphabetically, the same way for everyone. You can re-sort it yourself, by name or by price. Those orders are yours, not ours, and the default is name. Sorting by price puts the communities that have not listed one last rather than mixing them in.