Three different regulators, three different websites: here is exactly where to look up a license before you tour a community in DC, Maryland, or Virginia.
By DC Senior Advisor Care Team · August 19, 2026
A family searching for senior care in the Washington region often doesn't realize they're crossing a regulatory line every time they cross the District line, the Beltway, or the Potomac. A community in Cleveland Park answers to a completely different agency than one in Bethesda ten minutes away, and both differ again from a community in Arlington. That's three separate licensing bodies, three separate inspection databases, and three separate sets of rules about staffing, medication management, and resident rights — all serving the same metro area, sometimes the same extended family choosing between grandma's house in Prince George's County and an opening near her son in Alexandria.
The result is that a lot of due diligence gets skipped simply because people don't know where to click. This guide walks through where to verify a license is current, where to read a facility's actual inspection history, and what red flags in that history should make you slow down — jurisdiction by jurisdiction, so you're not guessing.
In the District, assisted living residences are licensed and inspected by DC Health's Health Regulation and Licensing Administration (HRLA), under the authority of the Assisted Living Residence Regulatory Act of 2000 (D.C. Code § 44-101.01 et seq.). Before touring anywhere in Capitol Hill, Petworth, Cleveland Park, or elsewhere in the District, ask the community directly for its current DC Health license number, then confirm that number matches what HRLA has on file. DC Health also maintains survey and complaint records for licensed facilities; a family member can request a facility's most recent survey report, and it is worth reading the actual findings rather than trusting a marketing brochure's claim of being 'fully licensed.'
'Fully licensed' is technically true of almost every operating community — it's the deficiency history underneath that license that tells you something. Look specifically for repeat findings (the same problem cited on consecutive inspections), anything involving medication administration errors, and anything involving elopement or supervision lapses. A single old citation that was corrected quickly is very different from a pattern.
Everything from downtown Bethesda and Silver Spring through Rockville, Wheaton, and out into Hyattsville and College Park falls under Maryland's Office of Health Care Quality (OHCQ), part of the Maryland Department of Health. Maryland licenses assisted living under COMAR 10.07.14 and assigns each resident a care level — Level 1, 2, or 3 — based on their acuity, which determines the staffing and nursing oversight a facility must provide for that resident. When you verify a Maryland facility, check two things: that its license is current for the level of care your family member actually needs, and that OHCQ's public inspection record doesn't show it operating residents above its licensed capacity or level, which is one of the more common Maryland citations.
Nursing homes in Maryland are called 'comprehensive care facilities' in state paperwork, which trips people up when they're cross-referencing a name across databases — don't assume a listing is wrong just because the terminology looks unfamiliar. OHCQ's public records also cover complaint investigations separately from routine surveys, and both are worth pulling if a facility is a serious contender.
Virginia splits licensing by care type in a way that catches people off guard. Assisted living facilities — including everything in Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, McLean, Reston, and Falls Church — are licensed by the Virginia Department of Social Services (VDSS) under regulation 22VAC40-73. Nursing homes, by contrast, are licensed by the Virginia Department of Health (VDH), a completely different agency with its own separate inspection database. If you're comparing an assisted living community against a nursing home for the same family member, you will need to pull records from both sites — VDSS won't show you a nursing home's history, and VDH won't show you an assisted living facility's.
One more Virginia-specific point worth knowing before you call a facility's business office: Adult Protective Services in Virginia is run by the Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services (DARS), not by VDSS. If you ever need to report a concern about an adult already living in a Virginia facility, DARS' statewide APS hotline — 1-888-832-3858 — is the right number, not the licensing agency itself.
Regardless of jurisdiction, treat license verification as a five-minute step you do before the tour, not something you ask about awkwardly during it. Get the facility's exact legal name and address (not just its marketing name — some communities operate under a name different from their licensed corporate entity), identify which of the three agencies above governs that address, and pull the current license status and the most recent one or two inspection reports.
Then bring specific questions to the tour instead of vague ones. If an inspection report cited a staffing ratio issue, ask how staffing has changed since. If it cited a medication error, ask what the facility's medication administration process looks like now. Facilities that take licensing seriously will generally welcome a family who has clearly done the reading — it's usually the ones with something to hide who get defensive about the question.
Free, no pressure, and no one rushing you. We answer to families, not to facilities.
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