How we score assisted living facilities in Charlotte, NC

Charlotte Assisted Living Facility Guide currently scores 138 assisted living businesses in the Charlotte, NC area. Every score comes from a fixed rubric applied the same way to every listing. This page explains what goes into that rubric, why we weight it the way we do, and where the data falls short.

What the composite score measures

Each business gets a 0-100 composite score built from five measured signals. We list them here from heaviest to lightest weight.

Why sentiment carries the most weight

A star average hides patterns. Two facilities can sit at the same 4.2 stars while one has quietly collected repeated complaints about staffing at night, or medication timing, or call-bell response, and the other hasn't. The average number won't tell you that. Reading what recent reviews actually say is the only way to catch it, which is why sentiment is weighted higher than the star rating itself. Rating still matters a great deal, since it's the broadest signal families check first, but it's blunt on its own. Volume matters because five glowing reviews and five hundred aren't the same evidence, so we log-scale it rather than let raw counts dominate. Recency matters because a facility's care quality, staffing, and management can change in a year, and a review from 2021 tells you less than one from last month. Completeness matters in a practical way: a facility whose phone number, hours, and address are wrong or missing is harder for a family to actually reach during a decision that's often made under time pressure.

How we build sentiment, and what we don't do

We don't republish reviews wholesale. Instead we synthesize the themes running through recent reviews for a business, praise and complaints alike, into the sentiment signal. For the original review text, star counts, and reviewer names, we link out to the business's Google listing so you can read the source yourself.

Confidence limits, stated plainly

A composite score is only as good as the reviews behind it. Businesses with few recent reviews produce a low-confidence score, and we label those listings as such on the page. Treat a low-confidence score as a starting point for your own questions, not a verdict, and always cross-check against the Google listing and a visit or call before deciding.

Paid placement and editorial disclosure

Scores are earned from this rubric and this data alone. They are never edited by hand. Where paid placement exists anywhere on this site, it is always labelled clearly and it never changes a business's score. Any list where the picks or the order were reviewed by an editor, such as our best independent living list, discloses that review on the page itself.

Who publishes this guide

Charlotte Assisted Living Facility Guide is published by Great Work Research, an independent directory of senior care providers in Charlotte, NC. It was founded by Rod Burnett, a notary public and notary trust delivery agent whose work in estate planning showed him how hard families find it to evaluate care providers exactly when the decision is most urgent. Rankings here come from published review data run through a transparent rubric, not from payment. Listings are drawn from public information, checked monthly, and facilities can request corrections at any time. Rod Burnett serves as managing editor and holds oversight of the rankings on this site. Data across the directory refreshes monthly, and each listing carries a "last verified" stamp showing that maintenance is active, not a one-time snapshot.

Questions about a listing, a score, or a correction request can go to info@reallygreatwork.com. You can also return to the directory home to browse all 138 facilities.