Someone who offers to help you choose
Placement advisors, senior living advisors, referral services, and geriatric care managers. The category where the person helping you may be paid by the place you pick.
This is the kit no site funded by referral fees will write, so here it is plainly. In Oregon, a person who refers your family to a care facility and is paid by that facility is doing something the law has a name for and a register for. They must be registered with the state before they offer placement services, they must tell you whether the facility is paying them, and they must tell you whether they only refer to facilities they have contracts with. You can look up whether the person calling you is registered, in a public search, in a minute.
What Oregon law calls this, and what it requires
Oregon defines a 'long term care referral' as a referral to a facility where the referral agent is paid by that facility. A person may not provide one unless they are registered with the Department of Human Services. Registered agents have duties: they must state whether the referral fee will be paid to them by the facility, and whether they refer only to facilities they already have a contract with. They may not sell or share your family's placement information without your explicit consent each time, and they may not refer you to a facility they have an ownership interest in. Registration is not a professional license and involves no exam — it is a register, not a qualification. But it is checkable, and the disclosure duties are real.
What to ask
1. Who pays you, and how much?
Ask it first and ask it exactly like this. The fee is normally paid by the community on move-in, which means the advisor is paid more when your mother moves into a more expensive place and paid nothing if she stays home. How much is the one thing on this page nobody publishes — no national referral service posts its fee schedule, and every published estimate traces back to a party to the trade. That is not us being coy: it is the answer, and it is why the question has to be asked out loud rather than looked up.
A bad answer sounds like: 'Our service is free to you.' That is true and it is an answer to a different question. Also: a number given confidently with no mention that it comes from the community rather than from you.
2. Are you registered with Oregon as a long-term care referral agent, and under what name?
It is a legal requirement for anyone paid by a facility to refer you to it, and there is a public search. Ask for the name they are registered under, which may not be the name on the website.
A bad answer sounds like: Not knowing the register exists.
3. Do you refer only to communities you have a contract with?
Usually yes, and the law requires them to tell you. It is the single most important thing to understand about the list you are about to be given: it is not a list of what is near you, it is a list of who pays them.
A bad answer sounds like: A list presented as the local options without this being volunteered.
4. How many communities in this area do you not have a contract with?
The follow-up that turns the previous answer into a number. Oregon has 2,259 licensed settings; a contracted network is typically a small fraction of them, and knowing the fraction tells you how much of the market you are not being shown.
A bad answer sounds like: Deflection to how carefully they vet their partners.
5. Will you tell me about options that pay you nothing — staying at home, adult day, an adult foster home?
Adult foster homes are 1,559 of Oregon's licensed settings and are typically outside referral networks entirely. If the advice never mentions them, the advice has a shape.
A bad answer sounds like: A reason those options are unsuitable that arrives before any question about your parent.
6. For a care manager: do you charge me by the hour, and do you accept anything from providers?
A geriatric care manager paid only by you is a genuinely different animal from a placement advisor paid by facilities, and the two use overlapping language. The test is not the title, it is who signs the check.
A bad answer sounds like: Both. Hourly fees from you and referral fees from providers is the arrangement with the most conflicts and the least disclosure.
What to check yourself
This is the half almost nobody does, and it is free. A public record answers questions no conversation will.
That they are registered with Oregon
ODHS runs a public search of registered long-term care referral agents. Search the name they gave you.
The disclosure, in writing
The compensation statement and the contracted-network statement are duties under the statute. Ask for them on paper or in an email, which also puts a date on what you were told.
Their list against the whole register
The list you were given, compared with every licensed community in the same area, is the fastest way to see what a network leaves out. That comparison is what this site's directory is for.
For a care manager, membership and its limits
The Aging Life Care Association publishes a member directory, and says itself that listing is not an endorsement. We repeat that rather than laundering it: the directory tells you someone joined a professional body, not that they are good.
What should worry you
None of these is proof of anything on its own. Each one is a reason to ask one more question before you decide.
- Your details reach a community before you asked them to.
- Calls that keep coming after you have said stop — under Oregon's rules, a written request to stop contacting you has to be honoured.
- A tour booked for you before you have described your parent's situation.
- Urgency that is not yours: a room that will be gone by Friday, a rate that ends Monday.
- No answer, or a soft answer, to who pays them.
- An 'advisor' whose recommendation never includes an option that pays them nothing.
Where this comes from
Every legal claim on this page is a paraphrase of one of these, read on the date shown. Nothing here is our opinion about what the law requires.
- OAR 333-536-0007 — In-Home Care Agencies: Classification — The four in-home care classifications and what each may provide, quoted from the rule. Read 2026-08-12.
- OAR 333-536-0093 — Criminal Records Checks; 333-536-0065 Service Plan; 333-536-0066 Initial Visit and Monitoring — That an agency must complete a records check and fitness determination before direct client contact, and must produce a service plan with monitoring. Read 2026-08-12.
- ORS 443.370, 443.373, 443.376 — long-term care referral agents — The definition of a long-term care referral, the registration requirement, and the disclosure duties. Read 2026-08-12.
- Oregon DHS long-term care referral agent register — The public search a family uses to check an advisor. Read 2026-08-12.
- Oregon Health Authority — licensed in-home care agencies, home health agencies, hospices — 235 licensed in-home care agencies with classification and expiry; 62 licensed home health agencies; 65 hospices. Read 2026-08-12.
- CMS Provider Data Catalog — Home Health Care Agencies — 51 Medicare-certified home health agencies in Oregon, against the state's 62. Read 2026-08-12.
- Oregon DHS Licensed Long-Term Care Settings Search — Inspection reports, substantiated violations and regulatory actions per facility, refreshed every 24 hours. Read 2026-08-09.
- Oregon Department of Human Services — Carina — That the state's care-matching service is open to Medicaid, OPI and OPI-M consumers, and not to private-pay families. Read 2026-08-12.
- Oregon Office of the Long-Term Care Ombudsman — That the Ombudsman is a free, independent advocate for residents of licensed long-term care settings, and its toll-free number. Read 2026-08-12.
- Oregon DHS Long-Term Care Referral Registry — consumer resources — The state's own description of the Ombudsman's service, quoted on the touring kit. Read 2026-08-12.