Editorial Guidelines

How we research and write our content, who is responsible for it, and how we handle corrections.

Our editorial mission

Harmony Senior Connect publishes guides, care-type explanations, and community listings to help East Tennessee families make informed senior care decisions. Our goal is to be the most accurate, plainly written, and locally relevant resource in the region — not the most comprehensive or the most trafficked.

We have a financial relationship with some of the communities we cover (see How We Make Money). We acknowledge that conflict directly rather than pretending it doesn't exist. Our editorial choices — which topics to cover, what to say about a community, what questions to ask — are made independently of our referral relationships.

Who writes our content

Our guides and care-type pages are written by members of the Harmony Senior Connect team — primarily our senior care advisors, who work with families daily and understand the real questions people ask. We do not use AI-generated copy without human review and editing, and we do not publish content written by communities about themselves without clearly labeling it as sponsored.

Community listings (name, address, care types, amenities, contact details) are gathered from direct outreach to communities, state licensing databases, and self-reported information submitted through our provider portal. We note the source of key facts where it matters.

Our resource articles draw on publicly available Tennessee Department of Health data, guidance from the East Tennessee Area Agency on Aging and Disability, and the direct experience of our advisors. We cite sources when the underlying data is not common knowledge.

How we research communities

We do not list a community without confirming it is licensed and operating. For assisted living communities and personal care homes in Tennessee, we cross-reference the Tennessee Department of Health's Adult Care Home Registry. For skilled nursing facilities, we reference CMS Nursing Home Compare ratings.

Beyond baseline verification, our advisors tour communities personally where possible. We ask about staffing ratios, staff tenure, inspection history, and what happens when a resident's needs exceed the community's current capabilities. We do not tour every community in our database annually — we note the date of any on-site visit on the relevant listing.

We do not verify every claim a community makes about amenities, programming, or pricing. Pricing in particular changes frequently and we strongly encourage families to confirm current rates directly. When we display pricing information, we label it as approximate and include the date it was last confirmed.

How often we update content

Care-type guide pages (assisted living, memory care, etc.) are reviewed at minimum annually and updated whenever significant regulatory changes in Tennessee affect the information.

Community listings are updated when a community notifies us of a change, when we receive a credible report of inaccurate information, or during our periodic outreach to communities in our directory. We aim to contact each listed community at least once a year to verify key details.

Resource articles carry a "last reviewed" date at the top. If an article has not been reviewed in more than 18 months, we add a notice advising readers to confirm time-sensitive details before acting on them.

How we correct errors

We correct factual errors promptly. If you spot something wrong — a community's address, phone number, care types, licensing status, or anything else — please let us know and we will investigate within two business days.

For minor factual corrections (a wrong zip code, an outdated phone number), we update the page silently. For material errors — information that may have caused a family to make a flawed decision — we add a correction notice to the affected page explaining what was wrong and what the correct information is. We do not delete pages to hide past errors.

We do not accept payment to change, improve, or remove editorial content. If a community disputes something we've written, we'll hear them out, investigate, and correct genuine mistakes — but commercial pressure does not change our editorial conclusions.

Standards we hold ourselves to

→We disclose our financial relationships plainly and in plain language, not buried in footnotes.
→We do not inflate ratings or reviews to favor paying partners.
→We do not publish content we know to be false or misleading, even if a community pays us.
→We don't label paid content as independent editorial without clear disclosure.
→When we don't know something, we say so rather than filling the gap with vague generalities.

Report an error or ask a question

If you've found inaccurate information on our site, or if you have a question about how we cover a particular topic, we want to hear from you.