By Indy Senior Advisor Care Team · August 19, 2026
A tour is a sales pitch with better lighting. Before you fall for the chandelier, confirm the building's actual license status, whether it takes PathWays or RCAP, and what the dementia disclosure really covers.
The Tour Is a Sales Call. Treat It Like One
Every assisted living tour in the Indianapolis metro follows roughly the same script: a warm greeting at the door, a walk through the nicest common areas first, a stop by the dining room at a flattering hour, and a soft close at the end asking when you'd like to move your parent in. None of that is dishonest, exactly. It's marketing, and marketing's job is to make you feel good, not to answer the three or four questions that actually determine whether a building is a safe, sustainable fit for the next several years.
The people giving the tour work in sales, even when their title says something else. That's not a criticism of them personally — it's just useful to know going in, so you ask the questions that don't come up naturally in a friendly forty-five-minute walkthrough. Below is what to check before you sign anything, based on how Indiana actually regulates this industry, not on how a brochure describes it.
First: Confirm What Kind of Building You're Actually In
This is the step families skip most often, and it matters more than almost anything else on the tour. In Indiana, a community can call itself "assisted living" in its marketing without holding a state license at all. Under 410 IAC 16.2-5-0.5(c), a building that provides only room, board, housekeeping, laundry, activities and limited help with daily tasks — without administering medication or providing residential nursing care — is not required to hold a Residential Care Facility (RCF) license, which is the license the Indiana Department of Health actually issues and inspects.
Separately, any Indiana community that markets itself using the term "assisted living" is supposed to register with the Family and Social Services Administration's Division of Aging as a Housing with Services Establishment. That's a registry, not a licensure process — it tells the state a building exists and what it offers, but it doesn't come with inspections or a public deficiency record the way an RCF license does.
So before anything else, ask the marketing director point-blank: "Are you licensed as a Residential Care Facility by the Indiana Department of Health, or are you a Housing with Services Establishment that isn't separately licensed?" A confident, specific answer is a good sign. A vague answer, or one that changes when you ask twice, is a reason to slow down.
If It's Licensed, Pull the Record Before You Go
If the building does hold an RCF license, don't take their word for its inspection history — you can pull it yourself, free, through the Indiana Long Term Care Survey & Inspection Public Search at hoosierusa.isdh.in.gov, run by the Indiana Department of Health. We've written a longer walkthrough of how to read that record at how to verify a facility's license, but the short version is: don't just count citations, read the deficiency narratives, and watch for the same finding repeating across consecutive surveys. One citation can be a missing signature. A pattern across three surveys is a pattern.
One wrinkle worth knowing before you look: unlike nursing homes, which carry a federal CMS Care Compare star rating, Indiana's Residential Care Facilities don't have an equivalent federal star system. The state inspection record is the primary public document you have, so it's worth the fifteen minutes to actually read it rather than relying on a Google rating, which measures how a family felt about customer service, not whether the building has a clean regulatory record.
Ask Directly: PathWays, RCAP, Both, or Neither
This is the question most families never think to ask on a first tour, and it's the one that can matter most a year or two in, once private-pay savings start running low. Indiana's PathWays Waiver (for Hoosiers 60 and up) covers personal care, case management, respite and similar services — including inside a licensed RCF, if that RCF holds a PathWays provider agreement. What PathWays does not cover is room and board. That's handled through a separate Medicaid program, the Residential Care Assistance Program (RCAP).
A facility can hold a PathWays agreement, an RCAP agreement, both, or neither. Holding one doesn't guarantee it holds the other. If there's any chance your family will need Medicaid help paying for room and board down the line, ask the specific question: "Does this community currently hold an RCAP agreement, and does it accept new RCAP residents, or only residents who convert to RCAP after they've lived here privately?" Some communities cap the number of Medicaid-supported beds, or only take RCAP residents who spent down while already living there — which is a very different policy than being open to new Medicaid admissions.
CICOA Aging & In-Home Solutions administers PathWays waiver case management for Marion, Hamilton, Hendricks, Johnson, Boone and Hancock counties — the same six counties this site covers — and is a good independent source to call if a community's answer on RCAP feels vague or contradicts what you find elsewhere.
If Memory Care Is Even a Possibility, Ask About the Disclosure — Not a Certification
If your parent has any cognitive decline, or you think they might eventually need a locked or segregated memory care unit, don't ask whether the building is "certified" for memory care. Indiana doesn't issue a separate memory care certification. What it requires instead, under Indiana Code 12-10-5.5, is a written Alzheimer's and Dementia Special Care Disclosure — a filing that spells out the specific programming, staffing and physical-environment features of that unit.
Ask to see the disclosure document itself, not a summary of it. Staff working in a dementia-specific unit are required to complete 12 hours of dementia-specific training initially and 6 hours annually; a July 2023 rule amendment raised those training requirements and added fines of up to $10,000 for violations. Asking "can I see your current dementia disclosure filing and your staff training log" is a reasonable, specific question, and how quickly and directly they produce it tells you something.
Do the Math Before You Fall in Love With a Place
Indiana's 2025 CareScout Cost of Care Survey puts the state median for a private, one-bedroom assisted living unit at $5,639 a month. That's a statewide figure, not an Indianapolis-metro number — no primary source publishes a local median for this area, and any number claiming to be "the Indianapolis assisted living average" should be treated skeptically unless it traces back to something citable. Ask the community for its own current rate sheet in writing, including the base rate and every tier of care add-on, rather than anchoring on the statewide median.
If you're weighing assisted living against staying home with paid help, do the arithmetic honestly. At roughly $35 an hour for non-medical home care, a 40-hour week alone runs about $6,067 a month before any overtime, holiday, or weekend differential — already above the statewide assisted living median. Home care can absolutely be the right call for lower weekly hour counts, but a lot of families assume it's automatically the cheaper option without running the actual hours.
And if memory care is part of the conversation, know going in that there is no published memory-care cost median for Indiana, or for most other states — CareScout doesn't survey it as a category. Get every memory care quote in writing before you compare buildings, and don't let anyone cite you a "typical" figure that isn't backed by their own written rate sheet.
Six Questions the Brochure Won't Answer
A few direct questions tend to surface more than an hour of hallway small talk. Worth asking on every tour, in this order: What are your specific admission and retention criteria — in writing — and at what point would my parent be asked to leave? Who is the actual licensee on record, and does it match the brand name on the building, since ownership and management turn over more often than families expect? What's your overnight staffing ratio, not just your daytime ratio? Walk me through exactly how medications are administered and by whom. If my parent's Medicaid eligibility changes after they've lived here, what happens to their housing? And finally: how much written notice do I get before a rate increase, and how much notice do you need before a discharge?
None of these are hostile questions. A community with good answers will usually be glad to give them, because it signals they're used to being asked. A community that gets defensive, or keeps redirecting back to amenities, is telling you something too.
One Last Thing: Go Back a Second Time
The scheduled tour happens at the best hour of the best day, with staff who know a prospective family is coming. If it's practical, try a second, less-arranged visit — a different time of day, ideally closer to a shift change or a mealtime that wasn't specifically staged for you. Bring someone else along on at least one visit; a second set of eyes and ears, especially someone who isn't emotionally exhausted from the search, tends to notice things you'll miss.
If any of this feels like more than you want to sort out alone, that's exactly what a local advisor is for — free of charge, and without a sales pitch on any one building over another.
