How do I find out who really owns a care home?
The name on the sign is often not the entity that holds the licence. California publishes the licensee and the administrator for every facility, and the two are frequently different from the brand a family is shown.
Ownership matters for a practical reason rather than an ideological one: when something goes wrong, the entity you have a relationship with is the licensee, not the brand on the brochure. It also tells you whether you are dealing with an owner-operator who lives nearby or one facility inside a portfolio.
The three names on a record
- The facility name — what appears on the sign and in advertising.
- The licensee — the legal entity holding the licence. Often an LLC whose name you will not recognise.
- The administrator — the named person the state holds responsible for day-to-day operation.
We reproduce licensee names exactly as the state publishes them, including capitalisation. Tidying a legal entity name is not ours to do, and an altered name is harder to match against corporate filings.
What to do with the name once you have it
- Search it against the California Secretary of State business registry to see the entity's status and agent.
- Search the licensee name here to see whether it holds other facilities, and what their records look like.
- Ask the administrator directly how long they have been in the role. Administrator turnover is not on the public record and is worth asking about.
Figures on this page are computed from California Department of Social Services licensing records and update when the underlying data does. Methodology · Report a correction