What to Ask on a Senior Living Tour (and What to Notice)

Every community tour is run by someone whose job is to make you feel good about the building. That is fine, but it means the tour shows you the lobby, the show apartment and the activities calendar, and the things that will actually determine your parent's daily life have to be asked for. Here is how to use the hour well.

Watch before you ask

The hallway tells you more than the brochure. Do staff greet residents by name in passing? Are residents out of their rooms mid-morning, and do they look engaged or parked? Does it smell clean in the way a home does, or in the way a cover-up does? Is the posted activity actually happening, with actual attendees? How does the receptionist speak to residents when she thinks nobody is evaluating her? None of this can be staged for you, which is why it is the most reliable evidence you will get.

Care and staffing

Ask: What is the staff-to-resident ratio during the day, and, just as important, overnight? Is there a nurse in the building around the clock, or on call? How do you handle a fall at 2am, step by step? Who does the care assessment before move-in, and how often is it redone? How do you tell me when something changes with my mother? What happens when her needs increase, and what does each care level cost? And the one that cuts deepest: what would make you ask a resident to leave? The discharge criteria define whether this move is the last one.

Money

Ask: What exactly does the base rate include, and what is billed as extra? What were rate increases in each of the last three years, in percent? What is the move-in or community fee, and is it negotiable? If savings run out, do you accept the Medicaid waiver, and after how many years of private pay? Is the deposit refundable, and on what terms? Communities answer money questions more honestly when they are asked matter-of-factly, in a list, as if you ask them everywhere, which you should.

Daily life

Ask to eat a meal, not see the dining room: the food at 12:30 on a Tuesday is the food. Ask how the community handles a resident who stops coming to activities, because the answer distinguishes a program from a calendar. Ask about visiting hours (there should effectively be none for family), pets, taking residents out for a day, and what happens to the room during a hospital stay.

The second visit

Come back unannounced at a different time: late afternoon or a weekend, when staffing is thinnest. Bring your parent this time if the first visit was without them. Ten minutes in the lobby at 5pm on a Saturday is worth more than any brochure the community will ever print.

Comparing afterward

Within a day of each tour, write three things you noticed and one worry. After three tours, the decision usually makes itself. If two communities tie, the tiebreak is not the newer building; it is the one where staff talked to residents rather than about them.