Comparing residential long-term care regulations between nursing homes and assisted living facilities.

•NHs followed a standard set of federal regulations, whereas ALF regulations varied widely across states, with differences in staffing and training requirements, inspections frequency, enforcement, and collection and dissemination of data (e.g., inspection reports).•Overall, state ALF regulations were less stringent than for NHs in all categories.•Because assisted living is overseen by states, there are no national level data available to measure and compare care quality across facilities, whereas for NHs there is a five-star rating system based on federal NH quality measures.