About FacilityTruth

Senior care contracts are written for facilities. Families deserve a neutral resource to understand them.

FacilityTruth produces plain-English informational reports describing senior care contracts and summarizing publicly available facility data. We exist to help families arrive at the admissions office understanding what's in the document and prepared to ask informed questions of the facility and, where appropriate, an attorney.

Origin

"Over the years I've worked closely with families navigating important financial decisions — helping them understand complex documents, uncover details that are easy to overlook, and gain a clear understanding of what they're committing to before moving forward."

— David Thomas, Founder

When someone close to me faced placing a parent in assisted living, I sat down with the contract the facility had handed them to sign. The document was 32 pages, with two exhibits. The family had less than 24 hours to review it. There was no neutral resource available to help them understand what was in front of them — what was standard, what varied between facilities, what questions to ask.

I looked for a tool that could help. Something that explained these contracts in plain English. Something that pointed families toward an elder law attorney for the legal questions, while giving them a clear understanding of what they'd be discussing. Something at a price any family could access. I couldn't find it. So I built it.

FacilityTruth is that resource. A plain-English description of the contract you're being asked to sign, an honest summary of the facility's publicly available track record, and a structured set of questions to bring to conversations with the facility and with an attorney. We exist to help families be informed — not to replace the legal counsel that any contract of this magnitude warrants.

Three principles

These aren't marketing language. They're the decisions made when this product was built and the principles applied to every report.

1. Independent and neutral

FacilityTruth has no financial relationship with any senior care facility, placement agency, elder law firm, or other party that has an interest in where families place their loved ones. We do not accept referral fees. We do not have affiliate arrangements. We do not send families to specific attorneys or services in exchange for compensation. The $99 you pay us is the only revenue we earn from your transaction — and it comes entirely from you.

2. Descriptive, not advisory

Our reports describe what contract language says and summarize publicly available data. We do not tell families whether to sign, what to negotiate, or what their legal rights are under their state's laws. Those questions are legal in nature and deserve a licensed attorney. Our role is to make sure families arrive at that conversation — and at any conversation with the facility — informed and prepared. We hold ourselves to descriptive language consistently across every report.

3. Transparent about what we are and aren't

FacilityTruth provides informational reports. We are not a law firm and we do not provide legal advice. We do not represent the opinion of a licensed attorney about any contract or any state's laws. When a situation calls for legal counsel — and most senior care contracts do — we say so plainly and point families to the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys directory at naela.org. We would rather lose a sale than mislead a family about what our product can and cannot do.

Methodology

Our description framework was developed through review of many real senior care contracts — agreements from large national operators, regional operators, and independent facilities across our service area. The framework identifies clause patterns we commonly see and provides industry context for each.

Each described clause in a report is cited by article and section number so you can find it in your contract. We show you the contract's actual language alongside our plain-English description. Verify our descriptions yourself. The fact that you can — that the underlying language is right there in your contract — is part of why our descriptive approach is appropriate for an informational service.

Facility data comes from publicly available government databases. Federal data — star ratings, staffing, quality measures, penalty history — comes from Medicare's Care Compare, maintained by CMS. State inspection citations come from state health department records. We retrieve, summarize in plain English, and provide source links so you can verify directly.

Our description framework is updated regularly as new contract patterns emerge and as state and federal regulations change. We do not editorialize publicly available data; we present it with context and source links.

What FacilityTruth is not

FacilityTruth is an informational service. We are not a law firm. Our reports do not constitute legal advice and do not create an attorney-client relationship. Nothing in any FacilityTruth report represents a legal determination that a clause is enforceable or unenforceable, that any state's law applies in a particular way, or that any specific course of action is appropriate.

For legal questions about a senior care contract — and we encourage you to ask those questions of an attorney before signing — we recommend a qualified elder law attorney. The National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys maintains a directory at naela.org.