Arizona Care Check: How to Look Up Nursing Home Ratings, Complaints, and Facility Deficiencies

A facility's website shows smiling residents in a sunny courtyard. The brochure mentions "compassionate, person-centered care." But what does the state actually say about this place? Before your parent moves into any nursing home or assisted living facility in Arizona, you should check the public record — and the state makes that surprisingly easy.

What Is AZ Care Check?

AZ Care Check is a searchable database managed by the Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS), Bureau of Residential Facilities Licensing. It's the state's official public portal for looking up licensed care providers, and it contains information you won't find on any commercial review site:

• Current license status and subclass (Supervisory, Personal, or Directed Care)
• Historical inspection reports
• Documented deficiencies and citations
• Enforcement actions (fines, license restrictions, revocations)
• Plans of correction submitted by the facility

Access it at azcarecheck.azdhs.gov. No login required.

How to Search for a Facility

You can search by facility name, city, county, zip code, or license number. The results show every licensed residential care facility in the state — assisted living homes, assisted living centers, nursing homes, and adult foster care homes.

For each facility, the listing shows:

License details: The facility's current license subclass tells you what level of care they're authorized to provide. If your parent has dementia and needs memory care, verify that the facility holds a Directed Care subclass license. A facility advertising "memory care" without this license is operating outside its legal authority.

Inspection history: Click into the facility's profile to see their inspection timeline. Arizona conducts routine inspections (surveys) and complaint-triggered investigations. Both types produce documented findings.

Reading a Statement of Deficiencies

When an ADHS inspector finds a violation during a survey, they document it in a Statement of Deficiencies (SOD). These are public records and are the most revealing documents available about a facility's actual care practices.

What to look for in an SOD:

Severity categories: Deficiencies range from minor (procedural documentation issues) to serious (actual harm to residents). Focus on citations involving direct resident care — medication administration errors, failure to implement the care plan, incidents resulting in falls or injuries, and inadequate supervision.

Repeat citations: A single deficiency might be a one-time lapse. The same deficiency cited across multiple surveys signals a systemic problem the facility hasn't fixed.

Plans of Correction (POC): After receiving an SOD, the facility must submit a corrective action plan. Check whether the state accepted their POC — and whether subsequent inspections found the same issues recurring.

CMS Five-Star Quality Ratings (Nursing Homes)

For skilled nursing facilities specifically, the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) assigns a Five-Star Quality Rating that synthesizes three measures:

1. Health inspections: Based on the three most recent standard surveys and any complaint investigations
2. Staffing: Hours of care provided per resident per day by nursing staff
3. Quality measures: Clinical outcomes tracked through resident assessment data (falls, pressure ulcers, infections, use of restraints)

The overall star rating (1 = much below average, 5 = much above average) provides a quick comparison point. But don't stop at the overall number — drill into the individual component scores. A facility might have 4 stars overall but a 1-star staffing rating, which is a red flag for day-to-day care quality.

CMS ratings are available on Medicare's Care Compare website. Cross-reference these with the state-level inspection data on AZ Care Check for a complete picture.

How to File a Complaint

If your parent is already in a facility and you've observed problems, you can file a complaint through two channels:

ADHS online complaint form: Available through the AZ Care Check portal. Complaints about licensed facilities are investigated by ADHS inspectors, who can conduct unannounced visits.

Phone: Call the ADHS Complaint Hotline at (602) 364-2536 for facility complaints. For suspected abuse or neglect of an individual, call Adult Protective Services at (877) 767-2385.

For quality-of-life issues and resident rights disputes that don't rise to the level of a licensing violation, the Long-Term Care Ombudsman at (602) 542-6454 may be a more effective first step — ombudsmen can mediate directly with facility administrators and often get faster results on care plan compliance and daily care issues.

What AZ Care Check Doesn't Tell You

The portal shows regulatory compliance, not the daily experience of living in a facility. It won't tell you whether the food is good, whether staff are kind, or whether residents seem engaged and content. That's why unannounced visits — at different times of day, including evenings and weekends — remain essential.

The Arizona Care Decision Toolkit includes a facility tour comparison worksheet that pairs regulatory data from AZ Care Check with on-the-ground observations, so you can evaluate facilities on both compliance and quality of life before making a placement decision.

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