Assisted living helps with daily tasks like bathing, dressing and medication. Memory care is assisted living in a secured setting, built for dementia. Skilled nursing is medical care, with licensed nurses on site around the clock. Choose by how much nursing is needed, not by how the building looks.
By Brett Spain, Founder, aCaringBed. Published 2026-08-02, last updated 2026-08-02.
Families usually start by looking at buildings. That is the wrong end to start from. Start with how much help the person needs each day, and the building narrows itself down.
These are the care levels we index, described the same way the rest of this site describes them.
Work down this list. The first one that sounds like your situation is the level to look at first.
Two things people get wrong here. A dementia diagnosis on its own does not mean memory care; plenty of people stay in assisted living for years. And skilled nursing is not a permanent sentence. Many stays are short rehabilitation after a hospital admission.
This is the difference that matters most, and almost nobody explains it.
Medicare certifies nursing homes and publishes a star rating, staffing data and inspection results for every certified one on Care Compare. So for skilled nursing there is a federal record you can read before you go.
Assisted living and memory care are licensed by states instead. There is no single federal rating to look up. What exists is a state licence and a state inspection history, and the quality of that record varies by state.
Medicare also does not pay for room and board in assisted living or memory care. It can pay for a limited skilled nursing stay after a qualifying hospital admission. Check Medicare's own page before you budget on anything else.
Medicare does pay for one thing here that families often miss: home health care. After a hospital or rehab stay it can cover skilled nursing visits, therapy and aide time in the person's own home. For some families that delays a move rather than replacing one, and it is worth pricing before you tour. We run a separate directory of Medicare-certified agencies for that: look up home health and hospice agencies on aHealingVisit.
aHealingVisit is operated by Spain Companies LLC, the same company that operates aCaringBed. Treat that link as our own sister site, not an independent recommendation. No money changes hands when you follow it. About the Spain care network.
Sources
These counts are read from our database when this page is built, not typed in. They change as we ingest more records, and the number you see is the number we have.
Read that table honestly. Senior Housing is the largest bucket by a long way, and it is the label we use when the source record confirms an age-restricted community but does not state a care level. It is not a claim that those communities offer no care. It means we do not know yet, and we would rather say so than guess.
So a search here is a good way to build a shortlist and a bad way to finish one. Call the community and ask what level of support is licensed at that address.
Care levels are not permanent. People move up, and sometimes back down. Three things change with them.
If a move looks likely within a year or two, ask each community what happens when the need increases. Some can raise the level in place. Others discharge.