How to check a Pennsylvania personal care home's license and inspection reports

Last verified: October 2026

Where can you look up a Pennsylvania personal care home's license?

Search the Pennsylvania DHS Human Services Provider Directory by county, ZIP or facility name; each personal care home or assisted living residence shows its license number, license status, full or provisional license type with effective and expiration dates, capacity, any dementia unit capacity, and links to its inspection summaries and certificates.

Our Pittsburgh-area directory reproduces those fields for all 231 licensed homes in the seven counties, retrieved October 28, 2026, so you can sort and filter them; the DHS directory remains the official record.

Sources: PA DHS Human Services Provider Directory.

What is in a DHS Licensing Inspection Summary?

A Licensing Inspection Summary is DHS's public report of an inspection: a cover letter with the review dates and the outcome, followed by each violation found, numbered and tied to a section of 55 Pa. Code with a short label, and the home's plan of correction.

In the most recent reports we read for 161 larger Pittsburgh-area homes, the most-cited sections deal with medications: following the prescriber's orders (2600.187), medication storage (2600.185), labeling (2600.184) and locked storage of medications and syringes (2600.183), followed by resident assessments (2600.225) and incident reports (2600.16). A single citation is not unusual; a pattern of the same citation across several reports is worth asking about.

How often are personal care homes inspected in Pennsylvania?

DHS inspects each personal care home and assisted living residence at least annually, and also inspects in response to complaints and reportable incidents, so many homes show several posted reports a year.

A newly licensed ALR is also reinspected within 3 months of initial licensure (2800.11(b)). In the DHS 2023 data, the average number of violations cited on annual inspections rose from 9.5 to 11.

What does a provisional license mean on the DHS directory?

A provisional license (formally a provisional certificate of compliance) means DHS found the home in substantial but not complete compliance; it lasts no more than six months, and no more than four consecutive provisional certificates may be issued (55 Pa. Code 20.54). As of October 28, 2026, 14 of the 231 homes in our seven counties held one.

More detail and the current list are on our provisional license page.

How do you check a nursing home instead?

Nursing homes are not in the DHS personal care directory; they are licensed by the Pennsylvania Department of Health, which has its own facility locator, and certified by CMS, whose Care Compare site shows the Five-Star rating, inspection results and staffing.

We reproduce the CMS data for every nursing home in the region on our nursing home directory.

The DHS directory: what it shows and what it does not