Start with the person’s needs: A license category describes a regulated setting; it does not prove that a particular home has an opening, appropriate staff, or every service a person needs.
Nursing homes
Nursing homes provide nursing and related care and may participate in Medicare or Medicaid. CMS publishes separate ratings for health inspections, staffing, and quality measures plus an overall rating. CMS also cautions that ratings cannot represent every consideration, including specialty care or how easy family visits will be.
Assisted living facilities
Maine DHHS describes an assisted living program as a facility offering services to residents in private apartments. Maine DHHS licenses these programs; it does not publish an equivalent CMS five-star rating for them.
Residential care facilities
Maine DHHS describes residential care as services provided in private or semi-private bedrooms. The State’s current provider-search glossary distinguishes levels primarily by licensed capacity and, for Level III, staffing structure:
- Level I: one or two residents.
- Level II: three to six residents.
- Level III: three to six residents with at least three employees who are not owners or related to the owner.
- Level IV: seven or more residents.
Why this directory has a “small licensed care home” group
We group records with one to six licensed beds for browsing because they are materially different in scale from large residences. This is a derived directory category—not a separate Maine license—and every page retains the state’s actual license type.
Official Maine source
Maine DHHS licenses Assisted Living Facilities, Residential Care Facilities, and Adult Day Programs under its Assisted Housing Program. The current rules took effect September 18, 2025.