The safety review
A CareGuard safety review walks a skilled nursing or assisted living facility against a fixed list of 189 items in 54 categories. The list does not change between buildings or between visits, which is the whole point: what comes back is comparable.
The findings go to the facility’s ownership. CareGuard does not issue a rating, a score, a seal, a certificate or an accreditation, and no facility can describe itself as approved by CareGuard. What CareGuard is not.
The seven groups
Facility and environment
43 items in 9 categories. Resident safety, infection control, kitchen and dining, bathrooms, common areas, resident rooms, staff areas, medication storage, outdoor areas.
Ongoing monitoring
The intake and monthly screening schedule that runs between visits, rather than a walkthrough list.
Memory care and dementia
40 items in 9 categories, from wandering prevention to dignity and privacy.
Restraint reduction
49 items in 11 categories — everything that has to be tried and documented before a restraint is considered.
Employment and labor risk
22 items in 6 categories: wage and hour, OSHA, discrimination, retaliation, training, staffing.
Resident rights and protection
26 items in 7 categories: rights, abuse, medication, neglect, finances, outbreaks, end of life.
Facility-wide compliance
9 items in 3 categories: licensure documentation, regulatory audit readiness, emergency preparedness.
All 54 categories
The complete list on one page, in source order, with every item.
For families
The same list, described in plain language for a relative rather than an operator.
How the count breaks down
54 categories. Nine of them are section headings that organize the rest — Ongoing Monitoring, Memory Care and Dementia, Avoiding Chemical and Physical Restraints, Identifying Legal Issues in Nursing Home Facilities, Employee-Related Issues, Resident-Related Issues and Facility-Wide Legal Concerns among them — and the remaining categories carry the 189 individual items between them.
What a review is, and is not
- It is a private engagement commissioned by a facility’s ownership.
- It is the same list every time, so it produces a baseline you can compare against.
- It is not a survey, an inspection, or a filing. CareGuard has no regulatory authority and told AHRQ so on its listing form.
- It is not a certification, an accreditation or a seal. None of those exist here.
Ask for a safety review of your facility
A CareGuard safety review walks the building against 189 items in 54 categories and reports what it finds to you, not to your site manager. The registration form takes the facility and a contact for the ownership group; scope is settled in the conversation that follows.
Questions people actually ask
How many items are on the checklist?
189 items, organized into 54 categories. That number is fixed and it is the only number CareGuard uses. Learn more: Why we stopped saying “certified”.
Does a facility pass or fail?
Neither. A review reports what was found, item by item, to the ownership group that commissioned it. There is no score and nothing to display. Learn more: What a Patient Safety Organization actually is.
Why are labor-law items on a patient-safety checklist?
Because understaffing and untrained staff are the route by which most neglect happens, and because the employment section is where an owner most often finds a problem they had no other way of seeing. Learn more: The gap between the floor and the owner.
Is the restraint section a clinical opinion or a standard?
Both, honestly. The alternatives it checks for are well described in the geriatric literature, and the position that a restraint is a failure of care planning rather than a tool is CareGuard’s. Learn more: What restraint-free care actually looks like.