By Minneapolis Senior Advisor Care Team · August 28, 2026
Any Twin Cities community that markets memory care must hold a specific Minnesota license, not a voluntary label. Here is what that license actually requires, what it does not guarantee, and the questions worth asking on a tour.
The tour that starts with a diagnosis
The conversation usually starts the same way: a parent has been diagnosed with dementia, or a diagnosis everyone suspected is finally confirmed, and within a few months the question shifts from whether they can keep living independently to whether a secured memory care unit is the safer setting. Families touring communities in Maple Grove, Burnsville, or Edina at this stage are often exhausted and moving fast, which is exactly when it helps to know that "memory care" is not a marketing word in Minnesota. It is a specific, legally defined license category, and knowing what that license requires changes what you should ask on the tour itself.
Dementia does not follow a predictable calendar, and a diagnosis often arrives well after behavior at home has already started to shift, meaning families frequently find themselves researching memory care licensure while also managing a crisis, not months ahead of one. That combination, a legal framework nobody has explained and a timeline that feels urgent, is exactly how families end up touring a building and signing paperwork the same week without fully understanding what the license they were handed actually promises. Slowing down enough to check a license category, even under time pressure, is one of the few steps in this process that takes minutes rather than hours.
Memory care is a license, not a certification you can shop around
In Minnesota, any assisted living community operating a secured dementia care unit must be licensed by MDH as an "assisted living facility with dementia care," under Minn. Stat. 144G.10, subdivision 2(b). This is a true state license category, issued the same way a base assisted living license is issued, not a voluntary certification a facility can self-declare or a program it can opt into informally. Only a facility holding this specific license may legally advertise or market itself as providing specialized dementia or memory care, under Minn. Stat. 325F.72. If a Twin Cities community is marketing "memory care" or "dementia care" and does not hold this exact license category, that is worth raising directly before you go further.
What the license actually requires beyond the base assisted living license
The dementia care license category carries two statutory requirements on top of everything the base assisted living license already requires. First, dementia-specific staff training under Minn. Stat. 144G.83: everyone assigned to provide direct care to a resident with dementia must be specially trained in person-centered dementia care before working unsupervised, with documented initial and ongoing in-service training, and higher standards for whoever supervises that training. Second, a mandatory written disclosure under Minn. Stat. 325F.72, which the facility must give you before you sign an admission agreement, covering admission and retention criteria for the secured unit, the assessment and service-plan process, staffing credentials and duties, physical environment and security features, the frequency and type of programming and family involvement, and the fee schedule for additional services.
What the license does not guarantee
It is worth being direct about this: a license category is a floor, not a ceiling, and it is not a quality rating. Holding the "assisted living facility with dementia care" license means a community meets minimum statutory requirements for training and disclosure. It does not mean the staff-to-resident ratio overnight is generous, that the specific caregivers on shift the week your parent moves in are experienced, or that the community's actual survey and complaint history is clean. Cross-check the license with the community's record on the Minnesota Assisted Living Report Card, which publishes Resident Health, Safety, and Staffing ratings drawn from MDH survey results, separately from whatever the community's own marketing or online reviews say.
How to verify the license before you even book a tour
Before scheduling a tour, search the community by name, city, or county in the MDH Health Care Provider Directory, and confirm it is listed specifically under "Assisted Living Facilities with Dementia Care," not just under the general assisted living category. This takes a few minutes and can save a wasted tour, or worse, a wasted deposit, at a building that cannot legally provide what it is advertising.
Ten questions worth asking on the tour itself
Once you have confirmed the license, the tour conversation should get specific. Ask to see the mandatory written disclosure document directly, not a summary of it. Ask what the overnight staffing ratio is inside the secured unit specifically, not the building-wide daytime ratio most tours lead with. Ask how door and exit security actually works, and what happens the first time a new resident tries to leave. Ask what the dementia-specific training actually covers and how often staff refresh it, beyond the statutory minimum. Ask what triggers a resident being asked to leave the secured unit, and where they would go if that happened. Ask how family involvement is structured, and whether care planning meetings happen on a fixed schedule or only when a family requests one. And ask, plainly, how many current residents are using a Medicaid Elderly Waiver customized living package inside the unit, since that tells you something about whether the community would remain viable if your parent's finances change later. If a tour guide cannot answer these questions on the spot, that itself is useful information, since a well-run memory care program should be able to speak to overnight staffing and exit security without needing to check with someone else.
Reading the disclosure document like it matters, because it does
Families often treat the written disclosure as paperwork to sign quickly during an emotional visit. Read it as what it is: the one document Minnesota law specifically requires this facility to give you honestly, covering exactly the categories described above. If something on the tour contradicted something in the disclosure, that discrepancy is worth resolving before you sign, not after your parent has moved in. A handful of Twin Cities communities that operate memory care under this license, such as Emerald Crest by Cassia in Burnsville and The Willows of Arbor Lakes in Maple Grove, are dedicated memory care buildings, while others, like Care Suites of Edina, offer memory care alongside general assisted living; either structure can work, but the disclosure document should make clear which one you are actually touring.
What to do if the license and the marketing do not match
Occasionally a family finds that a community's website, brochure, or a sales conversation describes memory care services that the facility's actual MDH license does not support, most often because the building only holds the base assisted living license and not the dementia care category. This is not a small paperwork gap; it means the facility is not legally authorized to market or provide the specialized dementia care it is describing. Raise the discrepancy directly with the community, and if it is not resolved to your satisfaction, MDH's Office of Health Facility Complaints, at 651-201-4200 in the Twin Cities metro or 1-800-369-7994 elsewhere in Minnesota, is the right place to report a licensing or marketing mismatch, separate from the 24/7 abuse-reporting line covered elsewhere on this site.