Our Mission is to actively promote standards of excellence in advocacy and enhancement of the quality of life for residents of long-term care facilities in the county.

Our Vision: The long-term care facilities in our county are the best in the country and reflect the high standards of resident-centered care

Our three key Values are to cherish our Ombudsmen, to fully and faithfully empower our clients, and to positively work with all community stakeholders

Ombudsman Services of San Mateo County, Inc is the only federal and state mandated program to advocate for the 9,200 residents in the 482 long-term care facilities in San Mateo County. Volunteer Ombudsmen work to resolve the problems and concerns of individual residents by creating a presence through regular unannounced facility visits where they monitor quality of care, quality of life, and violations of resident’s rights. Our trained ombudsmen, volunteers and staff, make approximately 6,000 visits each year, monitoring, investigating, and resolving about 2000 complaints on behalf of the residents.

While it is our goal to empower the residents to advocate on their own behalf, the reality is that many are fearful of reprisals, and others have lost the ability to advocate for themselves, and have no friends or family willing or able to assume this role for them. We are often the only voice for this frail and vulnerable population.

Services We Provide
The County, which is mandated to provide advocacy services to the elders in long-term care, contracts with our agency to provide services. Our state-certified long-term care ombudsmen monitor the long-term care facilities in the county to ensure the health and safety of the residents. Our services include the following:

• Information and Referral
• Monitor long-term care facilities
• Advocate for elderly and disabled residents
• Receive, investigate and bring resolution to complaints made by or on behalf of the residents;
• Investigate allegations of elder and dependent adult abuse in facilities
• Work to resolve systemic problems that are common to a group of residents or are common throughout the long-term care system
• Provide witnessing services for execution of Advance Directives for Health Care in Skilled Nursing Facilities;
• Provide access to MediCal in the event that residents of nursing homes have spent down their assets;
• Investigate MediCal fraud and retrieve share of costs for the MediCal system;
• Community Education on elder care and elder abuse issues
• In-service education provided to facility staff on issues related to elder and dependent adult care and particularly abuse prevention and reporting;
• Work to influence public policy on issues related to the population we serve.

The Community We Serve

21 Nursing homes
324 Assisted Living Homes
40 Intermediate Care Facilities
94 Adult Residential Facilities
18 Adult Day Programs
2 Adult Day Health Programs

A total of 499 facilities with 9,515 clients