We Scored Every Assisted Living Inspection in King County

Washington's DSHS inspects every licensed assisted living facility and publishes the results. We scored all 1,120 inspection reports across 194 King County facilities on two dimensions: how serious was the event, and how well did the facility respond?

The distinction matters. A facility with frequent minor findings that it fixes immediately is in better shape than one with fewer but serious findings that linger.

Two scores, not one

Each inspection report gets an event score (0-100, higher = more serious) and a response score (0-100, higher = better response). A low event score with a high response score is the best outcome: minor issue, handled well. A high event score with a low response score is the worst: serious problem, poor follow-through.

Here's what that looks like across facilities with at least 5 scored reports:

Best responders (low severity, strong follow-through):

Facility	Reports	Avg Event	Avg Response
Helping Hands for the Disabled	6	19.3	71.7
Ida Culver House Ravenna	8	23.8	66.8
Eldorado West Retirement Community	7	32.0	69.1
Providence Mount St. Vincent	7	34.6	70.0
Silverado - Bellevue	5	41.0	73.8

Worst responders (high severity, weak follow-through):

Facility	Reports	Avg Event	Avg Response
Olympic View Assisted Living	5	70.0	28.4
Greenlake Emerald City	9	69.0	35.8
Red Oak Residence of North Bend	7	72.9	44.6
Hilltop Manor Boarding Home	7	61.1	29.9
Sunrise of Redmond	6	68.2	40.5

The gap between these groups is significant. Some communities have minor findings and resolve them quickly. Some communities have serious findings and don't resolve them in a timely manner. A simple violation count would miss this entirely.

Not all report types are equal

King County's 1,120 scored reports break down into five categories:

Category	Reports	Avg Event	Avg Response
Fire Inspections	409	53.7	62.1
Routine Inspections	244	41.5	67.2
Investigations	243	56.2	55.7
Enforcement Actions	182	55.4	31.6
Informal Dispute Resolution	40	12.0	59.8

Enforcement actions stand out. They have the lowest average response score (31.6) by a wide margin. This makes sense -- enforcement happens when a facility has already failed to correct issues through normal channels. We weight these at 1.5x in our scoring. Investigations get 1.2x. Fire inspections get 0.4x because they're routine and procedural.

IDR (Informal Dispute Resolution) letters are the opposite. Low severity (12.0), reasonable response (59.8). These are dispute resolutions, not findings of wrongdoing.

What this means for families

If you're evaluating a facility, the raw number of inspection reports is almost meaningless. A facility with 48 reports (Kenmore Senior Living) isn't necessarily worse than one with 5. What matters is the severity of what inspectors found and whether the community fixed any problems that were found.

The data is public. Every report is a PDF on the DSHS website.¹ But reading through dozens of PDFs per facility isn't realistic. That's why we score them -- so you can compare facilities on what the inspection data actually says rather than how many reports exist.

Next in this series: what happens when you look at the same facilities through the lens of online reviews from multiple platforms.