Nearly every stalled move-in we see in Central Florida comes down to the same document — AHCA Form 1823 — and to one line on it that families never think to read before signing a lease.
By Orlando Senior Advisor Care Team · November 1, 2026
You have toured four communities in Lake Mary, picked one, and put down a deposit. Then the move-in date slips a week, then another. The marketing director is apologetic and vague. What is almost always happening behind the scenes is that the community is waiting on AHCA Form 1823 — the Resident Health Assessment for Assisted Living Facilities — or has received one and does not like what it says.
Florida law requires a medical examination before someone lives in a licensed assisted living facility, and Form 1823 is how that exam gets documented. The current version is the April 2021 revision, used statewide, and no licensed community in Orange, Seminole, Osceola or Lake County can skip it. It is four pages, it looks like routine intake paperwork, and it quietly controls three things that matter enormously to your family: whether your parent can be admitted at all, which license level they need, and how much the community is going to charge.
Under Florida Statute 429.26, the examination must be performed within 60 days before admission, or within 30 days after. That sounds generous. In practice it is the single most common cause of delay, because the exam has to be done by a licensed physician, a licensed physician assistant, or a licensed advanced practice registered nurse, and it has to be signed by that practitioner — not by a nurse at the community, not by a family member, not by the office that merely has the records on file.
If your mother's primary care physician in Winter Park can see her in nine days, your move-in is nine days out. If she is in the hospital, ask the hospitalist or the discharge team to complete the 1823 before she leaves; that one request can turn a two-week delay into a next-day admission, and it is the most useful thing a family can do during an AdventHealth or Orlando Health discharge. Communities can and do admit first and get the form within 30 days, but many will not take that risk with a resident whose needs look borderline.
One useful shortcut: if your parent has already been through a CARES assessment for Florida's Medicaid long-term care program, the statute treats that assessment as satisfying the medical examination requirement. Families going down the Medicaid path often already have what they need and do not realize it.
Buried in the form is a determination by the practitioner about whether the person's needs can be met in an assisted living facility. Attached to that is a hard statutory limit: a facility may not admit or retain a resident who is bedridden or who requires 24-hour nursing supervision, with a narrow exception for residents under hospice care.
"Bedridden" has a specific legal meaning in Florida, and it is stricter than most families assume. It means being confined to bed because the person cannot move, turn or reposition without total physical assistance; cannot transfer to a chair or wheelchair without total physical assistance; or cannot sit safely in a chair or wheelchair without personal assistance or a physical restraint. If a parent becomes bedridden after moving in, a standard assisted living facility can keep them for no more than seven consecutive days. A facility with an Extended Congregate Care license gets up to fourteen.
That is the real reason license type matters so much. A beautiful Standard-licensed community in Oviedo may be exactly wrong for a parent whose mobility is declining, and the 1823 is where that mismatch first becomes visible — if anyone reads it carefully.
Ask for a copy of the completed 1823 and read it yourself. Specifically: does the assistance level the practitioner marked for bathing, dressing, transferring, toileting and eating match what the community quoted you? A form that says "total assistance" on transfers alongside a base-rate lease is a bill that is about to go up, or a move-out notice six months from now.
Check the medication section too. The form records which medications your parent takes and whether they need help taking them. The difference between self-administration, assistance with self-administration, and full administration drives both staffing and price, and in Florida it also determines what training the staff touching those medications must have.
Two other protections worth knowing. If a community employs the practitioner who performs the initial admission exam, that practitioner is barred by statute from having a financial interest in the facility — so if the community offers you its own doctor, that is legal, but you are entitled to use your parent's own physician instead, and we usually suggest you do. And a resident cannot be moved from one facility to another without consultation with and agreement from the resident or their representative; a 1823 showing up at a new address is not consent.
If the form comes back saying your parent's needs cannot be met in assisted living, that is not the end of the conversation — it is information. It usually points toward a nursing facility, an Extended Congregate Care or Limited Nursing Services community, a small adult family care home, or hospice-supported assisted living. Ask the practitioner what specifically drove the determination, because a single transfer limitation and a 24-hour nursing need lead to very different places.
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Orlando Senior Advisor