By Susan Tang · July 13, 2026
NYS Health Profiles publishes real license and inspection data for free -- most families never open it. Here is a practical walkthrough of what to search, what SNALR/EALR/ALR certification actually means, and the red flags worth taking seriously.
The tool most families never open
New York State publishes free, public license and inspection data for every licensed senior care facility in the state, through NYS Health Profiles. Adult Care Facilities -- Adult Homes, Enriched Housing Programs, and Residences for Adults, including any ALR, EALR, or SNALR certifications layered on top -- are searchable at profiles.health.ny.gov/acf. Nursing homes, licensed separately under 10 NYCRR Part 415, are searchable at profiles.health.ny.gov/nursing_home, which also includes federal CMS star ratings.
Almost nobody uses this before touring, because the tour itself feels like the diligence step. It is not. A tour tells you what a building looks like on a good day, with staff on their best behavior and a schedule built around visitors. NYS Health Profiles tells you what the state's own inspectors found when nobody was performing for a guest.
Step one: confirm the facility is actually licensed, and for what
Search the facility's name at the appropriate NYS Health Profiles tool. For an Adult Care Facility, confirm the base license type first -- Adult Home, Enriched Housing Program, or Residence for Adults -- since this is the foundation everything else sits on top of. Then check whether it separately holds Assisted Living Residence (ALR) certification, which is the layer that actually authorizes personal-care-level assisted living services under 10 NYCRR Part 1001.
From there, check for any further certifications: Enhanced Assisted Living Residence (EALR), which allows aging in place for residents with physical mobility assistance needs, medical-equipment dependency, or chronic incontinence; and Special Needs Assisted Living Residence (SNALR), New York's real memory-care certification. None of these are automatic add-ons -- a community can hold the base license and ALR without EALR or SNALR, and marketing language like "memory care neighborhood" does not by itself confirm SNALR certification exists for that specific unit.
What ALR, EALR and SNALR actually mean -- and don't mean
New York does not license memory care as its own building type, and it does not tier assisted living licenses by evacuation capability the way some states do. Instead, it layers certifications on top of a single base Adult Care Facility license: ALR authorizes personal-care-level assisted living; EALR extends that to allow specific aging-in-place needs; SNALR adds a dementia-specific certification requiring an Individualized Service Plan for each resident with cognitive impairment.
The practical consequence for verification: do not ask a facility "do you offer memory care?" -- that gets answered yes almost universally, regardless of certification status, because it describes a marketing category rather than a regulated one. Ask instead whether the specific unit holds SNALR certification, and then confirm the answer independently through NYS Health Profiles rather than taking the tour guide's word for it.
Step two: read the inspection history, not just the license status
A current, active license only confirms the facility is legally operating -- it says nothing about the quality of care being delivered inside it. The inspection history is where the real information lives. For nursing homes, NYS Health Profiles also shows federal CMS star ratings alongside the state inspection record; assisted living and memory care communities in New York do not carry CMS star ratings at all, so the state inspection history is the only public quality record available for those settings.
Read deficiency narratives, not just citation counts. A missing signature on a form and an incident involving resident harm can both appear as a single citation in a summary count, formatted identically -- the difference only shows up once you read what the citation actually describes. Look specifically for repetition across multiple survey cycles: one citation is an isolated incident, but the same finding showing up survey after survey is a pattern worth taking seriously.
Step three: match the licensee name to who is actually running the building
Ownership and management of senior care facilities turn over more often than families expect, and a community is frequently marketed under a brand name that differs from the actual license holder of record. Confirm that the name on the NYS Health Profiles license record matches who you are actually being asked to sign an admission agreement with -- and ask directly if it does not, since a change in operator can also mean a change in staffing, policies, and financial stability that a family should know about before committing.
This check takes only a few minutes and has caught real discrepancies elsewhere in the industry -- including facilities still marketed and reviewed online under an old name years after an operator change, or a facility's former web domain having been repurposed entirely for unrelated content. A mismatch is not automatically disqualifying, but it is always worth a direct question.
Red flags worth taking seriously
A facility that cannot or will not tell you, by name, which certifications it holds -- ALR, EALR, SNALR -- is a red flag on its own, since this is public information any legitimate operator should be able to state plainly. A facility whose name does not appear at all in the NYS Health Profiles search, despite claiming to be licensed, is a more serious concern and worth confirming directly with NYSDOH before proceeding further.
Repeated deficiency findings across consecutive inspection cycles, particularly involving the same category of concern, deserve real weight -- this is the state's own pattern-detection, not a review site's opinion. And a facility that discourages a family from independently pulling its own inspection record, or reacts defensively to the question, is itself useful information, regardless of what the record actually shows.
Step four: if something looks wrong, know where to report it
NYS Health Profiles is a research tool, not a complaint line. If a tour or a records review raises a genuine concern about facility conditions or care, NYSDOH's Adult Care Facility complaint line is (212) 417-5990 during business hours through the Metropolitan Area Regional Office; the nursing home and home health complaint line is (212) 417-4999, or the statewide hotline 1-888-201-4563.
Separately, the CIDNY-operated Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program, at 1-888-855-9807, advocates for residents already living in a facility -- but only with the resident's consent, since the ombudsman does not license, inspect, or fine a facility the way NYSDOH does. If someone is in immediate danger, call 911 first and make the regulatory report afterward.
A worked example: checking a real Staten Island facility
Say a family is considering a Willowbrook-area nursing and rehabilitation community as part of a short-term rehab search. The first step is searching that facility by name at profiles.health.ny.gov/nursing_home, confirming its 10 NYCRR Part 415 license is active, and noting its current CMS star rating alongside the underlying inspection detail -- a star rating alone is a summary, not a substitute for reading what specific deficiencies, if any, drove that score.
The same process applies to an assisted living search in, say, Stapleton or Dongan Hills: search profiles.health.ny.gov/acf, confirm the base Adult Care Facility license, then check specifically for ALR and, if memory care is relevant, SNALR certification by name. If a family cannot find the facility at all under the name it is marketed under, search close variants -- a legal entity name, a former name, or the operator's corporate name -- before assuming the facility is unlicensed, since marketing names and license-holder names do not always match exactly.
Do this before the tour, not after
The entire NYS Health Profiles check for one facility takes ten to fifteen minutes -- less time than the average tour itself. Doing it beforehand means walking into a tour already knowing which certifications to ask about by name, which past deficiencies to ask how the facility addressed, and whether the operator on record matches who is actually running the building. That preparation consistently produces better, more specific answers than showing up with only general questions.
