California LIC forms
LIC 602A: the medical assessment for RCFEs
Short answer
The LIC 602A is the CDSS medical assessment for residential care facilities for the elderly. A licensed medical professional completes it, and it records the prospective resident's diagnoses, cognitive conditions, tuberculosis and communicable-disease screening results, and — critically for the facility — whether the resident can manage their own treatment, medication, and equipment.
It is required as part of admission, and it goes stale: CareMAR treats the assessment as current for 12 months from the date of the physician's exam, and expects it to have been completed within 90 days before admission. A 602A that is on file but two years old is a finding, not a green light.
What the form covers
The current revision runs to several pages and works through the resident's medical picture section by section. The recurring structure is the part worth understanding, because it repeats:
- Diagnoses — what the prospective resident has been diagnosed with.
- Cognitive conditions — including mild cognitive impairment and major neurocognitive disorder, each defined on the form itself.
- Results of the exam for communicable tuberculosis, with the test date, the date read, the type of test, the result, and the action taken if positive.
- Results of exams for infectious and contagious diseases.
Under most of those headings the form asks the same three questions in sequence: what the condition is, what the treatment, medication, or equipment for it is, and whether the resident can manage that treatment, medication, or equipment themselves — and if not, what assistance is needed.
The third question is the one that matters to you
That last question is not medical trivia. It is the physician telling you, in writing, how much of this resident's care your staff is going to be responsible for. It is the document that connects the resident's medical condition to your medication handling obligations, and it is the honest basis for deciding whether your facility can meet this person's needs at all.
An assessment that leaves those answers blank has not told you what you needed to know, and sending it back is a reasonable thing to do.
Who completes it, and when
A licensed medical professional completes and signs the LIC 602A — this is not a form the facility fills in on the resident's behalf. The facility's job is to obtain it, check that it is complete, keep it current, and act on what it says.
Before admission
The assessment is meant to be recent at the point of admission rather than at some point in the resident's history. CareMAR expects it to have been completed within 90 days before the resident moves in.
Every year after that
The assessment is renewed annually. CareMAR measures the 12 months from the physician's exam date, not from the day the document was scanned into the system — a distinction that matters, because a freshly uploaded old assessment is still an old assessment.
In practice the LIC 602A travels with the LIC 603A resident appraisal, which is also re-done annually. Facilities that renew one and forget the other end up half-current.
What goes wrong with the 602A
- Expired without anyone noticing, because nothing in a paper binder announces a date.
- On file but incomplete — the "can the resident manage their own medication?" answers left blank.
- Renewed by re-scanning the previous year's form rather than obtaining a new exam.
- Current for the 602A but lapsed for the matching annual resident appraisal.
- Kept somewhere other than the resident's record, so it can't be produced quickly when asked for.
- Describing care needs the facility is not actually equipped to meet, with no corresponding change in the service plan.
Getting the current version
Download the LIC 602A from CDSS rather than reusing a stored copy. The revision stamp in the corner of the form tells you which version you have, and the form has been revised — using a superseded version is avoidable. CDSS publishes the current LIC forms in its forms library, linked below.
Common questions
What is the LIC 602A?
The LIC 602A is the CDSS medical assessment for residential care facilities for the elderly. A licensed medical professional completes it, recording the prospective resident's diagnoses, cognitive conditions, tuberculosis and communicable-disease screening, and whether the resident can manage their own treatment, medication, and equipment — and if not, what assistance they need.
Who fills out the LIC 602A?
A licensed medical professional, not the facility. The facility's responsibility is to obtain it, check that it is actually complete, keep it current, and make sure the care it describes matches what the facility can provide.
How long is a LIC 602A valid?
CareMAR treats the medical assessment as current for 12 months measured from the date of the physician's exam, and expects it to have been completed within 90 days before admission. Measuring from the exam date rather than the upload date matters: re-scanning last year's assessment does not make it current.
What makes a LIC 602A incomplete?
Most often, blank answers to the questions asking whether the resident can manage their own treatment, medication, or equipment. Those answers are the reason the form exists from the facility's point of view — they tell you what your staff is taking on. An assessment that leaves them blank has not answered the question, and returning it to the physician is reasonable.
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.