The process

Upload your contract. Receive an informational report.

Upload the contract, enter the facility name, pay once. Your plain-English informational report arrives in your inbox within 30 minutes.

Step 1 — Prepare your contract

You'll need a copy of the residency agreement, admissions agreement, or similar contract document the facility has asked you to sign. Most senior care contracts run between 15 and 60 pages, including any exhibits or addenda. If you have a digital PDF, you're ready. If you only have a paper copy, you can scan it using your phone.

We accept PDF files and image files (JPG or PNG). Both iPhone and Android have built-in document scanners that produce clean, multi-page PDFs without needing to install anything.

Step 2 — Complete the intake form and pay

Our intake form takes about three minutes. You'll upload the contract, enter the facility's name and state, provide your email address for delivery, and confirm your payment. Payment is processed securely by Stripe — we never see or store your card information.

What we collect

• Your name and email address (for report delivery)
• The facility's name and state
• Your contract file (PDF, JPG, or PNG)
• Payment confirmation (no card data stored on our systems)

What we never do

• Share your contract or personal information with any third party for their own purposes
• Contact the facility on your behalf
• Use information from your contract to contact you, your family, or the facility for any reason other than your specific report
• Sell your data, send marketing email, or charge your card again without your knowledge

Optional — research consent

At intake, we'll ask whether you'd like to allow a de-identified version of your contract to be retained in our research library. The de-identification process automatically removes names, addresses, dates of birth, and other personal identifiers from a copy of the contract before it enters the library. The library helps us recognize patterns across many contracts and improve future reports.

Participation is optional and opt-in. You'll receive the same report regardless of your choice. Declining has no effect on price, delivery, or content. You can read the full description in our Privacy Policy.

Step 3 — We describe the contract

The moment payment is confirmed, our automated system processes your contract. We extract and read the document, identify each significant clause by article and section, and produce a plain-English description of what the language says.

For each significant clause, the report describes the contract language, provides industry context (what's typical, what varies), and offers questions you may want to bring to the facility or to an attorney. We do not tell you what action to take, what to negotiate, or whether to sign. Those decisions are yours.

What we describe in the contract

• Fee structure — base rate, ancillary fees, community/move-in fees
• Rate adjustment provisions — notice periods, caps (if any), frequency limits
• Care level assessment and care tier provisions
• Discharge provisions — grounds, notice periods, procedures
• Dispute resolution provisions — arbitration, jury waivers, opt-out windows
• Hospitalization and bed-hold provisions
• Medication management and ancillary supply terms
• Personal property and rules-change provisions
• Responsible party and signature obligations

Step 4 — We retrieve facility data

Simultaneously, we query Medicare's Care Compare database — the federal government's public record of every Medicare-certified care facility in the country — and pull star ratings, staffing data, quality measures, and any federal penalty or payment denial history. We also retrieve state inspection citations for the facility from the state health department, where the data is available.

Facility data we retrieve

• Medicare overall star rating (where applicable)
• Health inspection sub-rating and citation history
• Staffing data versus state and national averages
• Quality measures sub-rating
• Federal penalty and payment denial history
• State inspection citations from the past 36 months
• Ownership information and recent ownership changes (where published)

Step 5 — Your report arrives

Within 30 minutes of purchase, your full report arrives as a PDF attached to an email from FacilityTruth. You'll also receive an immediate confirmation email at the moment your payment is processed, so you know we've received your contract.

The report is designed to be read in about 15 minutes and is yours to keep, share with family members, or bring to a consultation with an elder law attorney. We strongly recommend doing the latter for any contract you have substantive questions about — our report is designed to make that conversation more productive, not to replace it.

What every report includes

Section	What it covers
Contract overview	A two-paragraph plain-English summary of what the contract is and what it commits each party to.
Clause-by-clause description	Each significant clause described in plain English, with citations to the article and section, industry context, and questions to consider.
Federal Medicare data	Where applicable, the facility's Medicare star ratings, staffing data, and federal penalty history with source links.
State inspection summary	Where available, citations from the past 36 months summarized in plain English with severity codes and source links.
Questions to consider	Questions you may want to bring to a conversation with the facility, and questions you may want to bring to an attorney.
Resources	How to find a qualified elder law attorney, your state's long-term care ombudsman, and other relevant consumer resources.

Quick answers

Is this legal advice?

No. FacilityTruth produces informational reports describing what contract language says and summarizing publicly available data. We do not interpret your legal rights, do not tell you what action to take, and do not represent the opinion of a licensed attorney. For any legal question about your contract or your rights, we recommend consulting a qualified elder law attorney. The National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys maintains a directory at naela.org.

What if I've already signed the contract?

An informational report can still be useful for understanding what you've signed and identifying questions worth bringing to an attorney. Many contracts include a rescission window during which the agreement can be cancelled — your report will describe what your specific contract says about this, but the legal interpretation of those provisions is something to discuss with an attorney.

What if my facility isn't in the Medicare database?

Some facilities — particularly newer ones or those that don't accept Medicare — are not in the Care Compare database. If that's the case, your report will still include the full contract description and any available state inspection data. We'll note clearly which data was and wasn't available.

What if my contract is hard to read?

Standard printed contracts and phone-scanned PDFs process reliably. Heavily handwritten addenda or very poor quality scans may result in partial coverage, in which case your report will note which sections couldn't be fully read. If you're concerned about quality, email us a sample page before purchasing and we'll let you know whether it's processable.

See all frequently asked questions