Greenville Senior AdvisorBy Greenville Senior Advisor Care Team · September 2, 2026
Since July 1, 2024, the S.C. Department of Public Health, not DHEC, licenses and inspects assisted living and nursing homes. The assisted living regulation was reissued as Regulation 60-84 in May 2025. The rules families rely on, such as staffing ratios and admission limits, carried over; the names, phone numbers and websites changed.
What actually happened to DHEC?
For decades the Department of Health and Environmental Control handled everything from restaurant inspections to air permits to nursing home licensing. Act 60 of 2023 split it in two, effective July 1, 2024. The health side, including the Healthcare Quality office that licenses and inspects care facilities, became the S.C. Department of Public Health (DPH). The environmental side became the S.C. Department of Environmental Services.
For a family in Greenville, Anderson, Pickens or Laurens County, the practical change is where you look things up and who you call. Facility licenses, inspection reports, complaints and enforcement orders are now DPH matters. Older brochures, admission packets and even some facility websites still say DHEC, which is not a sign of anything wrong, only of how slowly paperwork catches up.
What happened to the assisted living regulation?
South Carolina's legal name for assisted living is community residential care facility, or CRCF. For years the governing rule was DHEC Regulation 61-84. After the split, DPH reissued it as Regulation 60-84, published in the State Register on May 23, 2025. If you search for the old number you will still find copies; the current text lives on DPH's community residential care page.
The substance families care about carried over. A CRCF still needs at least one staff member for every eight residents during peak hours and one for every 30 off-peak, with someone awake at all times. It still may not admit people who need hospital or nursing home care, IV medications or staff-given sliding-scale insulin. Residents still sign an admission agreement that lists every fee and requires 30 days' notice of changes.
Where do I check a license now?
DPH's Find a Facility map replaced the old DHEC county lists. Pick the Community Residential Care Facilities tab, search by name or town, and each pin shows the license number, expiration date, licensed beds, administrator and the regulation the facility is licensed under. The same data powers our directory. On the current data, these are the license counts for the four counties we cover:
| County | Senior-serving CRCFs | Licensed beds | Flagged Alzheimer's unit | Nursing homes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Greenville | 33 | 2,554 | 23 | 18 |
| Anderson | 14 | 600 | 4 | 6 |
| Pickens | 9 | 497 | 5 | 6 |
| Laurens | 5 | 279 | 3 | 4 |
Source: S.C. DPH Find a Facility data as of October 31, 2026. Seven more licensed CRCFs in the four counties are small residences run by county disabilities boards or the Department of Mental Health, which serve younger adults and are not senior placements.
Did enforcement change?
DPH kept the monthly enforcement report DHEC used to publish and, in September 2024, made it easier to find on its website. Each report lists the administrative and consent orders Healthcare Quality executed that month, with a summary of the inspections and violations behind each one and the penalty. From January 2025 through the latest report, the orders that name CRCFs or nursing homes in our four counties are few, which says more about how rarely DPH escalates to an order than about how often problems occur.
Routine inspection findings are handled through a written plan of correction and never appear in the monthly report. That is why the most useful document for a family is still the facility's latest inspection report, which Regulation 60-84 makes public on written request.
What should families do differently now?
Very little, in practice, except to use current sources. When a facility hands you paperwork that cites DHEC or Regulation 61-84, it is usually old stationery, not a sign that something is out of date in the building itself. What matters is that the license shown on DPH's Find a Facility map is current, that the administrator named there is the person running the building, and that the facility can produce its most recent inspection report and plan of correction.
It is also worth knowing that DPH's licensing data is now easier to use than the old county PDF lists. You can export the entire list of community residential care facilities to a spreadsheet, sort by county or bed count, and see at a glance which buildings report an Alzheimer's special care unit. That is the same data we rebuild our directory from, and each facility page states the date of the data it uses.
Which phone numbers changed?
Complaints about a licensed facility go to DPH Healthcare Quality at 1-800-922-6735 or through the online complaint portal DPH opened in March 2026. Abuse of an adult living at home goes to the Department of Social Services' Adult Protective Services at 1-888-227-3487, unchanged. Problems involving residents of nursing homes and CRCFs go to the regional long-term care ombudsman, which for Greenville, Anderson and Pickens counties is at the Appalachian Council of Governments (864-242-9733) and for Laurens County at Upper Savannah COG.
Medicaid, Optional State Supplementation and the Community Choices waiver were never DHEC programs; they belong to the S.C. Department of Health and Human Services (SCDHHS), and that has not changed.
Frequently asked questions
Is DHEC still involved in assisted living?
No. Since July 1, 2024, facility licensing, inspections and enforcement belong to the S.C. Department of Public Health; DHEC no longer exists under that name.
Is Regulation 61-84 still in effect?
It was replaced. DPH reissued the community residential care regulation as Regulation 60-84 in the State Register on May 23, 2025.
Did the staffing ratio change?
No. Regulation 60-84 keeps the minimum of one staff member per eight residents at peak hours and one per 30 off-peak, with someone awake and dressed at all times.
Where do I file a complaint now?
With DPH Healthcare Quality, by phone at 1-800-922-6735 or through its online complaint portal.
