Feb 20 2025 | Requirements to Maintain Resident Contact Information

Resident contact information, along with aggregate data on residents’ care needs, must be made available to various agencies upon request. This article aims to clarify what must be available, to whom, and by when.

Substitute House Bill 1218, passed through the legislature in 2021, updated RCW 18.20.095 regarding facilities’ requirements to maintain current resident rosters and additional contact information. Specifically, all assisted livings must:

• Create and regularly update a current resident roster containing the name and room number of each resident.
• This roster must be provided immediately upon in-person request from a state long-term care ombuds. Residential Care Services (RCS) licensors and complaint investigators also request this information upon entry to the assisted living facility to conduct inspections or complaint investigations.
• Create and regularly update current, accurate, and aggregated (meaning, collected and provided as a whole) contact information for all residents, including contact information for each resident’s representative, if any.  This aggregated list must include each resident’s name, room number and, if available, the resident’s telephone number and email address. For each resident’s representative, the facility must maintain these individuals’ names, relationship to the resident, phone number, and if available, email address.
• This information must be provided to the ombuds, within 48 hours of written request. A different, reasonable timeframe might be agreed to should 48 hours be difficult.

RCS licensors and complaint investigators will request additional resident information during licensing visits and complaint investigations, in addition to the resident roster. WAC 388-78A-3140 simply states, “The assisted living must…provide requested records to the representatives of the department.”

The resident information requested by RCS staff includes what is called “Attachment D.” The information in Attachment D is used to inform RCS staff on current resident characteristics so they can better select areas of focus regarding potential resident issues and/or outcomes during inspections and investigations.

Per the RCS Assisted Living Licensing Standard Operating Procedures on page 13, the RCS staff are directed to note the following:

WHCA highly recommends each assisted living facility have a system to complete and maintain this form or one very similar to it; the complete information not only supports speedier onsite RCS visits but can also be used by facility staff to track and trend specific resident diagnoses, needs, hospitalizations, and other characteristics that can be useful in evaluating the resident population’s level of complexity, as well as utilizing the data for quality improvement efforts.

For questions or comments about assisted living operations and regulations, please email Vicki McNealley or call 360-352-3304 extension 107.