Care Options Network Vacancy Report Guide

People searching for a "Care Options Network vacancy report" are usually looking for one of two things: the Care Options Network Vacancy Report, which lists open senior housing and care beds across Minnesota for discharge planners and social workers, or a senior care workforce report that tracks staff vacancies and turnover. This guide covers both, and shows how a small operator can turn the same ideas into a 15-minute weekly bed-board routine.

Go to the publisher's own site. Care Options Network's vacancy page lets you filter open beds by housing type, region and city rather than hunting for a PDF filename that changes from week to week.

What housing types and regions it covers

The online report groups listings into four housing types: skilled nursing facilities, assisted living (including memory care and care suites), residential assisted living, and independent living. Regions cover Northwest, Northeast, Southwest and Southeast Minnesota, plus Minneapolis and St. Paul, with a city filter underneath.

Publisher's page vs summaries and third-party PDFs

When you read any industry vacancy or workforce report, you will run into three versions: the publisher's own page, trade press summaries that quote one headline number, and gated PDFs behind an email form. Always start on the publisher's page so you can see the date, the housing type and the definitions behind the numbers. Read the site's privacy policy before putting your email into any download form; ours is at royaltygrouphomes.com/legal/privacy.

Two different kinds of report use the word "vacancy," and mixing them up is the most common mistake. A housing vacancy list shows which communities have open beds right now. A workforce report tracks two numbers: the share of staff positions that are unfilled (vacancy rate) and how many people leave over a period (turnover rate).

Vacancy rate vs turnover rate

Vacancy is a snapshot; turnover is a flow. The same distinction applies to your beds. A house can have low vacancy and high turnover if beds refill quickly but residents leave after a month. High vacancy with low turnover means move-outs are rare, but an empty bed sits a long time before the next referral arrives. The Bureau of Labor Statistics JOLTS program separates job openings from separations the same way.

Read the segment closest to your model

In any senior living report, skilled nursing, assisted living and independent living behave differently. Read the line for independent living or residential settings, not the combined headline.

Translate percentages into beds and dollars

A 10% vacancy rate in a 9-bed house is roughly one empty bed. At $1,400 a month, that is $1,400 a month you are not collecting. Percentages are for reports; beds and dollars are for running a house. For the underlying math, see what a vacancy report is and the format worth copying.

A small operator will see three kinds of public numbers. Each answers a different question.

None of the published reports knows what a specific empty bed costs you this month. For that, your own bed board and rent ledger beat any outside study. If you are weighing operations software against a clinical system, read how operations software compares with a clinical EHR.

Whether you run a house in Minnesota or in California, four habits turn vacancy tracking into filled beds. None of them needs new staff or a consultant.

Step 1: track every bed through three states

Stop marking a bed only as "open" or "full." Track it as empty, being turned or held for a move-in, or occupied, and check the rent ledger next to it so an occupied bed with two months of unpaid rent does not pass for healthy.

Step 2: set a move-out-to-move-in target

Long-term demand for care and supportive housing is steady; the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook projects 18% employment growth for home health and personal care aides from 2025 to 2035. Set a clear target for your own houses, such as filling an open bed within 14 days. If your average is 30, your bottleneck is move-in speed or referral follow-up, not the market.

Step 3: score referral partners by beds actually filled

Most operators judge referral partners by who calls most often, not who delivers. Take every discharge planner and case manager who sent you a prospect in the last 90 days and count one thing: beds actually filled. Rank the list by that number and spend your follow-up time on the top three. One column in a spreadsheet usually shows that half of a referral list fills nothing.

One hard rule: never pay for referrals. Paying or receiving anything of value for a referral to a recovery home can be a federal crime under 18 U.S.C. 220 when services are covered by a health care benefit program, and many states have their own patient-brokering laws. Earn placements by keeping your availability accurate and answering the phone with a real bed.

Step 4: run a 15-minute weekly vacancy review

Same day, same time each week. Walk the bed board, check arrears on the rent ledger, confirm each pending move-in has a date, and reconfirm your public listings on the open beds board. Fifteen minutes a week catches a stalled move-in before it becomes a lost month of rent.

The bed board, the arrears check and the referral partner scorecard all work in a spreadsheet at one house; our Excel rent ledger guide gives you the exact columns and formulas. Where operators hit the wall is reconciliation across houses: rent owed versus rent collected, and which partner filled which bed across move-ins.

General property tools such as Buildium handle unit leases and accounting well, but they are not built around a bed board or referral partner attribution. Care documentation systems center on clinical records rather than bed-level occupancy.

Royalty Group Homes covers the three pieces a small operator checks every week: the bed board, the rent ledger and referral partner tracking. Your first house is free with every feature; two or three houses are $99 a month, and four or more are $199. Where it falls short: it has no clinical features, and it is not your accounting system (the ledger exports to CSV for your bookkeeper). Compare the options in the software buyer's guide.