New in CareMAR
Ask CareMAR: Title 22 answers, with the citation attached
Short answer
Ask CareMAR is a regulation lookup built into the CareMAR app. You type a question in plain English — the kind you would otherwise spend twenty minutes hunting through a PDF for — and it answers from the regulations for your home's licence type (the RCFE, ARF or ICF rules), showing the section citations beside the answer.
It does two things most tools like this don't. It keeps binding regulation separate from CDSS handbook guidance, labelling each, because those are different authorities. And it stops at what the rule says — it will not tell you whether your facility is compliant.
The problem it solves
The CDSS manual is long, the numbering is not intuitive, and the questions that come up in a six-bed home come up at the worst moments — mid-admission, mid-med-pass, or with a licensing analyst in the hallway. The realistic alternatives have been to search a PDF, ask in a Facebook group, or guess.
Searching a PDF only works if you already know the vocabulary the regulation uses, which is usually not the vocabulary the question arrived in. That mismatch is the actual problem.
Regulation and guidance are not the same thing
This is the design decision we care most about. The CDSS manual interleaves two kinds of text: the binding regulation, and the department's explanatory handbook guidance that sits alongside it. They look similar on the page. They are not the same authority.
Ask CareMAR keeps them structurally separate — separate storage, separate labelling, and separate presentation in every answer, with guidance shown beneath the rule it explains and marked as guidance. There is no code path that merges the two.
Why this matters more than it sounds
An operator who acts on handbook guidance believing it is the regulation has made a decision on a weaker footing than they realise. An operator who dismisses the regulation because it was presented as guidance has made the opposite mistake. Blurring the two is the most consequential thing a regulation tool can get wrong, so we made it structurally impossible rather than a matter of careful prompting.
What it will not do
These are deliberate exclusions, not a roadmap. Each one is a judgement about a specific facility with real consequences, and those belong to your administrator and your licensing analyst.
- It does not evaluate whether your facility is compliant.
- It does not run mock inspections or score citation risk.
- It does not generate plans of correction.
- It does not check your resident data against the regulations in the background.
- It does not cover other states, or rules outside your home's own licence type.
The line is simple and we intend to hold it: Ask CareMAR answers what does the rule say. It never answers are you okay.
Read the citation
Every answer shows the sections it came from, and that is not decoration. An answer you cannot trace is an answer you cannot rely on, and for anything consequential you should open the cited section and read it — the same advice this site gives about its own written guides.
A regulation lookup is a faster way to find the rule. It is not a substitute for the rule, for your administrator's judgement, or for asking your licensing analyst when the answer genuinely matters.
Common questions
What is Ask CareMAR?
Ask CareMAR is a regulation lookup built into the CareMAR app. You ask a question in plain English — for example whether a particular record has to be kept, or what a section requires — and it answers from the CDSS manual text with the section citations shown alongside the answer, so you can read the underlying rule yourself instead of taking the answer on faith.
What regulations does Ask CareMAR cover?
The regulations for your home's own licence type. An RCFE is answered from Title 22, Division 6, Chapter 8 and the related Health and Safety Code sections; an ARF from Title 22, Division 6, Chapter 6, the Community Care Facilities Act and the relevant Title 17 and Lanterman Act provisions; an ICF/DD-H or DD-N from Title 22, Division 5, Chapter 8.5, the related Health and Safety Code sections, 42 CFR 483 Subpart I with the CMS surveyor guidance, and the Medi-Cal ICF rules. It does not cover other states.
Does Ask CareMAR tell me whether my facility is compliant?
No, deliberately. It answers what a rule says. It does not evaluate your facility, score your citation risk, run mock inspections, or generate plans of correction. Those are judgements about a specific facility with specific consequences, and they belong to your administrator and your licensing analyst — not to a lookup tool.
Does it distinguish regulation text from CDSS guidance?
Yes, and this is the part that matters most. The CDSS manual interleaves binding regulation with explanatory handbook guidance, and the two are not the same authority. Ask CareMAR keeps them structurally separate and labels them separately in every answer, so guidance is never presented to you as the rule.
Official sources
Regulations change and this page is a plain-English summary, not the law. Before you act on anything here, read the current text at the agency that issued it.