Assisted Living Acquisition IT Due Diligence Checklist

Buying an assisted living community means taking responsibility for technology that staff already depend on. A working front-desk computer tells you little about who controls the email system, whether resident records can move, or what happens when the seller’s IT support ends.

For buyers in Frederick, MD and surrounding communities, IT due diligence should produce three concrete results: evidence of what you are acquiring, a costed transition plan, and an agreed checklist for the first day under new ownership. Use the recommendations below alongside your legal, operational, clinical, and licensing reviews.

1. Map the systems that keep the community operating

Ask the seller to walk through actual workflows with department leads. Follow a resident admission, a medication-record lookup, a family call, and a payroll cycle. Record the application, device, connection, vendor, and responsible person behind each workflow.

• List resident-record and electronic medication administration record systems, pharmacy interfaces, scheduling, billing, and payroll.
• Identify internet circuits, phones, Wi-Fi, firewalls, switches, servers, staff devices, printers, and backup services.
• Flag shared systems operated by the seller’s parent company or another location.
• For every critical workflow, document what staff would do if access stopped at closing.

Reconcile the inventory against invoices, contracts, administrator-console exports, and an authorized site walkthrough. Record missing evidence as an unresolved item.

2. Prove ownership and the right to transfer

For each service, identify the contracting entity, billing contact, account owner, renewal date, and transfer process. Have counsel review assignment and change-of-control provisions; request written vendor confirmation where approval or a new agreement is needed.

• Who controls the domain registration, DNS settings, email tenant, phone numbers, and cloud subscriptions?
• Which devices are owned, leased, financed, or supplied by a vendor?
• Can the buyer receive the required records, attachments, audit history, and configuration documentation in a usable format?
• Which support contracts, software licenses, and warranties will continue, and which need replacement?

If services must remain with the seller temporarily, document support hours, authorized access, charges, incident escalation, and an exit date in the transition arrangement. Budget for overlapping services and migration work.

3. Ask for security evidence tied to the acquisition

Request recent assessment findings, remediation records, supported-software status, incident history, privileged-account lists, and a demonstration of recovery for a critical system. Establish who owns each outstanding issue and whether the buyer can verify its resolution.

Review MFA coverage, vendor remote access, endpoint protection, and the separation of resident, guest, administrative, and critical-system networks. The HHS Healthcare and Public Health Cybersecurity Performance Goals provide a voluntary reference for practices including MFA, departing-worker access removal, asset inventory, and network segmentation.

Agree on safe assessment methods with system owners before scanning production equipment. A vulnerability report should identify the systems examined, testing date, exclusions, and unresolved findings so the buyer understands its limits.

4. Establish privacy scope before opening the data room

Ask privacy counsel to determine the seller’s and buyer’s HIPAA roles and applicable state obligations. HIPAA applies to covered entities and business associates; an assisted living label alone does not establish coverage. For healthcare providers, covered-entity status includes conducting certain standard transactions electronically, as explained in HHS guidance on covered entities.

Agree on what information reviewers may receive, who may access it, and when access ends. Start with contracts, inventories, redacted reports, and demonstrations that avoid exposing resident details. Where protected health information is needed, have counsel establish the permitted disclosure and safeguards. HHS explains that its minimum necessary standard generally limits the amount of PHI used, disclosed, or requested for the purpose.

Review applicable business associate agreements, record-retention responsibilities, and the process for responding to resident record requests after ownership changes.

5. Assign clinical and life-safety responsibilities explicitly

Identify any nurse-call, emergency-call, access-control, fire-alarm, or connected clinical systems on site. Name the responsible specialist, maintenance provider, operational owner, and escalation contact for each. Confirm whether it depends on local power, internet, a phone line, a server, or vendor remote access.

Require coordination with the appropriate clinical, facilities, and specialist vendors before network changes, device replacement, or testing. IT should document and support the agreed connections while qualified specialists validate the system’s operational and safety requirements. ASPR TRACIE’s healthcare cybersecurity guidance likewise recommends collaboration between IT and clinical engineering when identifying equipment dependencies.

6. Rehearse the first day under new ownership

Build an acceptance checklist with named testers and a clear escalation path. Test using authorized accounts and approved test records.

• Confirm designated staff can reach required resident records and medication systems.
• Verify incoming and outgoing calls, email, printing, and essential vendor interfaces.
• Confirm the buyer’s administrators can manage critical systems and recover account access.
• Verify monitoring alerts and support requests reach the new responsible team.
• Coordinate seller-access removal with the approved handover, preserving only documented transition access.

Agree on who can halt a change, the fallback procedure, and who signs off on operational readiness.

7. Sequence integration around real dependencies

Separate continuity decisions from longer-term consolidation. Before combining networks or moving applications, validate identity mappings, permissions, interfaces, data exports, and rollback options. Pilot changes with a small approved group.

For Microsoft 365, Microsoft’s tenant-to-tenant migration guidance identifies domain transfers, workload dependencies, coexistence, and target licensing as planning considerations. Treat consolidation as a scheduled project with its own testing and acceptance criteria.

8. Turn findings into decisions before closing

Deliver a short decision register: issue, supporting evidence, operational impact, responsible owner, estimated remediation cost, and deadline. Have the deal team classify each item as a closing prerequisite, an agreed transition dependency, or a funded post-close improvement.

The most useful acquisition checklist gives leadership a verified answer to one question: can the community operate safely and reliably when responsibility changes hands?