US News & World Report’s Best Senior Living ratings program continues to grow, recognizing 1,703 senior living communities with top marks in its third year. The latest results were announced today.
This year’s total compares with the 1,274 communities rated as “Best” in the first year of the program and 1,675 communities recognized last year.
The program recognizes independent living, assisted living, memory care and continuing care retirement/life plan communities. Online profile pages for each rated community share where they are considered “Best” overall, community details, specific areas where they were judged to excel by residents and their families, and accolades and testimonials to help older adults and their families evaluate places to live.
To be included in the US News analysis, a senior living community had to participate in a consumer-satisfaction survey in 2023, meet certain eligibility criteria and earn a specific final weighted score as described in the program’s methodology. This year, surveys were conducted for 3,518 communities, 3,216 met the eligibility criteria and 1,703 were recognized as “Best” in one or more of the categories of independent living, assisted living and memory care. Of those communities, 57 were recognized as Best CCRCs.
Communities that were rated well on personal care delivery quality tended to rate highly overall, Zach Adams, ScM, senior health data engineer at US News, told McKnight’s Senior Living.
112 companies have communities among ‘Best’
In all this year, 124 operators had communities evaluated, with all but 12 having at least one community recognized as “Best.” Brookdale Senior Living and Sunrise Senior Living were the only two companies to have more than 100 communities recognized, at 300 and 141, respectively.
Rounding out the list of 10 organizations with the greatest number of communities that were rated “Best” were Atria Senior Living / Holiday by Atria (74), Five Star Senior Living by AlerisLife (62), Americare Senior Living (58), Life Care Services (50), Benchmark Senior Living and Leisure Care (43 each), and Brightview Senior Living and Integral Senior Living / Solstice Senior Living (38 each).
Twenty-eight of the 112 companies with communities making the cut had one community each recognized.
Of the 40 senior living companies with 20 or more participating communities, 18 companies had more than 50% of their communities recognized in at least one care/service level: Aegis Living, Agemark Senior Living, Americare, Belmont Village Senior Living, Benchmark, Brandywine Living, Brightview, Ebenezer Society, HumanGood, Kisco Senior Living, Legend Senior Living, Leisure Care, LCS, Principal Senior Living Group, Silverado, Sunrise, The Arbor Company and Vitality Living.
Listings exist on the website for communities not rated as “Best” also, and some of them may earn accolades in specific areas, such as food, and may display trophy icons for those domains in their listings.
“Even though not every senior living community is rated ‘Best,’ they may be very good in certain things, and it certainly doesn’t mean that they’re poor,” Adams said. “We aim to show the strengths of each of the communities on their pages and provide as much information as possible to consumers trying to make this choice for themselves or their loved ones.”
47 states represented
Forty-seven states — all but Alaska, South Dakota and Wyoming — as well as Washington, DC, were represented in this year’s ratings. California, with 156 communities, Texas (138), Florida (130) and Illinois (101) were the only states where more than 100 communities were recognized. Of the states with communities recognized in the program, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota and Vermont, as well as Washington, DC, had the fewest number of communities rated “Best,” at two each.
The 10 metropolitan areas with the greatest number of communities recognized were New York (79 communities), Chicago (61), Boston (53), Los Angeles (47), Washington, DC (45), Dallas–Fort Worth (41), Seattle (38), St. Louis (33), Philadelphia (32) and Atlanta (30). Any other metro area with communities that were recognized had fewer than 30 each.
More survey vendors this year
US News expanded the number of companies from which it accepted data for the program this year. In addition to Activated Insights, which had collected data in the two previous years, also administering surveys this year were Sensight Surveys, ServiceTrac and Holleran Consulting.
“That allows us to cover a lot more communities and a lot more organizations as well. We know that a lot of companies have their own chosen survey provider that they may have long-standing relationships with,” Adams said.
Adams said US News anticipates increasing the number of senior living communities that participate in future years by raising the number of vendors that conduct the consumer satisfaction surveys.
Free webinar
US News will hold a free webinar from 1 to 1:45 p.m. ET on May 9 for industry leaders, consumers and others to learn more about how communities are considered for US News’ Best Senior Living communities and the methodology behind the ratings.
