Editorial Standards

Exactly how we verify a facility listing, source a cost figure, or research an Ohio rule before it appears on this site — and what we refuse to publish.

This is our canonical explanation of how Columbus Senior Advisor is researched and verified. Every other page on this site that touches these topics links back here rather than repeating it.

Families trust senior-care websites with one of the harder decisions they'll make for a parent, and that trust only means something if it's earned honestly. This page explains, in specific and checkable terms, exactly how we decide what goes on this site — and just as importantly, what we leave off rather than publish something we can't stand behind.

How we verify a facility listing

Every facility on this site is confirmed against the operator's own website — the actual name, the actual street address, and the actual type of care offered (independent living, assisted living, memory care, skilled nursing, or some combination). We do not treat a facility as verified because it appears on Caring.com, A Place for Mom, Seniorly, or any similar aggregator. Those sites are useful for one thing only: surfacing candidate names worth investigating further. They are never treated as a source of truth, because aggregator listings are frequently stale, duplicated, or simply wrong — we have found facilities that closed years ago still listed as open, addresses that belong to a different building entirely, and care types that no longer match what the operator actually provides. An aggregator listing gets a name onto our research list. It never gets a name onto this site.

Once a candidate is identified, we go to that operator's own website (and, where useful, their published licensing status) to confirm three things before it's eligible to appear here: that the community is currently operating, that the address is correct, and that the care type is accurately described. If we can't find or confirm that information on the operator's own site, or if what we find conflicts with what other sources say, or if the information looks stale — a website that hasn't been updated in years, a phone number that no longer connects, signs the community may have closed or changed hands — we reject the candidate and log the reason rather than include it anyway. We do not pad our facility count to hit a target number. A shorter, accurate list is worth more to a family than a longer one with dead entries in it.

What we do and don't publish about a facility

We publish name, address, and general care type for every facility we list. We do not publish bed counts, license numbers, pricing, or star ratings unless the operator itself publishes that specific figure on its own site. We take this position because those numbers change frequently, are easy to get wrong secondhand, and can actively mislead a family if we're working from an old figure. If an operator publishes a number, we'll cite it and note where it came from. If they don't, we say we don't have it rather than estimate one or borrow one from an aggregator.

How we handle cost data

Every cost figure on this site traces back to the CareScout Cost of Care Survey, and specifically to its published Ohio state medians. We do not publish a Columbus-specific dollar figure for any type of care, because CareScout — like essentially every credible national cost survey — reports Ohio data only at the statewide level. No organization we're aware of breaks these numbers out by Ohio metro area, so a Columbus-specific median simply doesn't exist as a verified figure, and we won't manufacture one to make a page look more locally authoritative. Where it's useful context, we'll say plainly that Columbus costs may run above the state median given the metro's size and cost of living — but we label that as our judgment, clearly separated from the sourced figure, never blended into it.

The same discipline applies to memory care. CareScout does not publish a memory care cost median for Ohio or any other state — memory care is typically priced as an add-on to a base assisted living rate rather than surveyed as its own category. Any "average memory care cost" you see quoted for Ohio or Columbus online is not backed by the same survey methodology as our other figures, and we do not publish one here, on any page, under any circumstances.

How we research Ohio-specific rules

Every regulatory claim on this site — how Ohio licenses assisted living, how memory care disclosure works, how the PASSPORT Medicaid waiver functions, who handles ombudsman complaints or adult protective services — is researched fresh against Ohio's own statutes, administrative code, and state agency publications. We never assume that a rule which holds in another state (or another one of our advisor sites, several of which cover other states) applies here. Ohio is not Texas, Indiana, or Minnesota, and treating state-specific regulation as interchangeable is exactly the kind of error that can send a family down the wrong path at a stressful moment. Where a regulatory fact has strong secondary corroboration but we haven't located a direct primary-source citation, we say so rather than present it with false certainty.

When we get something wrong

Facilities change ownership, close, or update their offerings; rules get amended; a source we relied on can turn out to be outdated. If you notice something on this site that looks wrong — a closed facility still listed, an address that's changed, a rule that's out of date — we want to know. Contact us and we'll investigate and correct it. Holding ourselves to this standard only works if families tell us when we've fallen short of it.