Guide · Title 22
22 CCR §87211: what an RCFE has to report, and when
Four different clocks live in one short regulation. This walks through §87211 subsection by subsection, quotes the text that governs each deadline, and says which form goes with which event.
Last reviewed September 8, 2026.
What §87211 is
§87211 sits in the chapter of Title 22 that licenses Residential Care Facilities for the Elderly. It is titled “Reporting Requirements,” and it is the section a licensing analyst reaches for when something happened in your facility and they want to know whether you told the Department about it in time.
It is not one rule. It is eight lettered subsections that cover three unrelated subjects: incident reporting in (a) through (c), the licensee's own financial distress in (d) through (f), and administrative changes in (g) and (h). Only (a), (b), and (c) are about residents. Most of the confusion in the field comes from people quoting a subsection letter from the wrong group.
Two more things are worth knowing before the walkthrough. The chapeau in (a) says the enumerated list is a floor — “including, but not limited to” — so an event that plainly threatens a resident is reportable even if it does not match a listed example. And the abuse deadlines in (b) and (c) are not really §87211's own invention: both say “as required by Welfare and Institutions Code Section 15630(b)(1),” the mandated-reporter statute that covers every person who works in your building.
The clocks
Read from fastest to slowest. The clock starts when the event happens, or — for abuse — when you form the suspicion, not when a supervisor gets around to reading the shift note.
| Clock | Trigger | Goes to | Cite |
|---|---|---|---|
| Immediately | Fire or explosion on the premises | Local fire authority | §87211(a)(3) |
| 2 hours | Suspected physical abuse with serious bodily injury | Ombudsman, licensing, law enforcement | §87211(b) |
| 24 hours | Suspected physical abuse without serious bodily injury | Ombudsman, licensing, law enforcement | §87211(c) |
| 24 hours (phone or fax) | Epidemic outbreak, poisoning, catastrophe, major accident | Licensing, and local health officer when appropriate | §87211(a)(2) |
| 24 hours | Fire or explosion where there is no organized fire service | State Fire Marshal | §87211(a)(3) |
| Next working day | Fire or explosion on the premises | Licensing agency | §87211(a)(3) |
| 2 business days | Foreclosure, eviction, bankruptcy, rent default, utility shutoff | Department, State Ombudsman, residents, representatives | §87211(d) |
| 7 days (written) | Death, serious injury, AED use, welfare-threatening incident | Licensing, and the person responsible for the resident | §87211(a)(1) |
| 30 days | New administrator hired | Department | §87211(g) |
| 15 working days | Change of chief corporate officer | Licensing agency | §87211(h) |
The two-hour duty, precisely
The two-hour clock is the one most often stated wrong, so here is the text.
Any suspected physical abuse that results in serious bodily injury of an elder or dependent adult shall be reported to the local ombudsman, the corresponding licensing agency, and the local law enforcement agency within two (2) hours as required by Welfare and Institutions Code Section 15630(b)(1).
Three conditions have to line up: physical abuse, of an elder or dependent adult, that resulted in serious bodily injury. Miss any one and you are on the twenty-four-hour clock in (c) instead. Note what is nota condition: you do not have to have concluded that abuse occurred. Suspicion is the trigger, and the investigation is the state's job, not yours.
“Serious bodily injury” is defined in Welfare and Institutions Code §15610.67 — loss of consciousness, concussion, bone fracture, protracted loss or impairment of a bodily member or organ, a wound requiring extensive suturing, serious disfigurement. It is a specific list, and it does not turn on how upset anybody was.
The seven-day written duty, precisely
A written report shall be submitted to the licensing agency and to the person responsible for the resident within seven days of the occurrence of any of the events specified in (A) through (D) below. This report shall include the resident's name, age, sex and date of admission; date and nature of event; attending physician's name, findings, and treatment, if any; and disposition of the case.
Two details get missed here. First, the report goes to two recipients — the licensing agency andthe person responsible for the resident. Second, the subsection lists the contents, and an analyst will read the report against that list: name, age, sex, date of admission, date and nature of the event, attending physician's name and findings and treatment, and disposition. A narrative that leaves out the physician's findings is an incomplete report even if it tells a good story.
Subsection by subsection
Every quotation below is the regulation's own text. The paragraph under each one is ours.
22 CCR §87211(a) — Reports the licensee must furnish to the licensing agency
Each licensee shall furnish to the licensing agency such reports as the Department may require, including, but not limited to, the following:
The chapeau for the incident-reporting duties. Its branches are (a)(1) the seven-day written report and its four triggers (A)–(D), (a)(2) 24-hour occurrences such as outbreaks, and (a)(3) fires and explosions. 'Including, but not limited to' means the enumerated list is a floor, not a ceiling.
22 CCR §87211(a)(1) — Seven-day written report — required contents
A written report shall be submitted to the licensing agency and to the person responsible for the resident within seven days of the occurrence of any of the events specified in (A) through (D) below. This report shall include the resident's name, age, sex and date of admission; date and nature of event; attending physician's name, findings, and treatment, if any; and disposition of the case.
This is the seven-day written duty and the list of what the report must contain. The four triggering events are (a)(1)(A) death, (a)(1)(B) serious injury, (a)(1)(C) AED use, and (a)(1)(D) any incident threatening resident welfare, safety or health. In ClearReport this is normally LIC 624, or LIC 624A when the trigger is a death.
22 CCR §87211(a)(1)(A) — Death of any resident
Death of any resident from any cause regardless of where the death occurred, including but not limited to a day program, a hospital, en route to or from a hospital, or visiting away from the facility.
Every resident death is reportable regardless of cause or location — including an expected death on hospice, and including a death that occurs off the premises. The written report is due within seven days under (a)(1). File on LIC 624A.
22 CCR §87211(a)(1)(B) — Serious injury under facility supervision
Any serious injury as determined by the attending physician and occurring while the resident is under facility supervision.
Seriousness is the attending physician's determination, not the facility's. Falls with injury, injuries of unknown origin, and injuries from another resident's behavior are the common triggers. Seven-day written report under (a)(1); file on LIC 624.
22 CCR §87211(a)(1)(C) — Use of an Automated External Defibrillator
The use of an Automated External Defibrillator.
Any AED use is reportable on its own, whether or not the resident was injured and whether or not the resident survived. Seven-day written report under (a)(1).
22 CCR §87211(a)(1)(D) — Any incident threatening resident welfare, safety or health
Any incident which threatens the welfare, safety or health of any resident, such as psychological abuse of a resident by staff or other residents, or unexplained absence of any resident.
This is the catch-all, and it is where elopement / unexplained absence and psychological abuse live — the regulation names them as examples, so the category is broader than the two it lists. Resident-on-resident altercations, medication errors that put a resident at risk, and behavioral incidents are commonly reported here. Seven-day written report under (a)(1); file on LIC 624. Suspected physical abuse has its own faster deadlines under (b) and (c).
22 CCR §87211(a)(2) — Epidemic, poisoning, catastrophe, or major accident — 24 hours
Occurrences, such as epidemic outbreaks, poisonings, catastrophes or major accidents which threaten the welfare, safety or health of residents, personnel or visitors, shall be reported within 24 hours either by telephone or facsimile to the licensing agency and to the local health officer when appropriate.
Norovirus, influenza, COVID-19 and other communicable-disease outbreaks fall here, as do food poisoning and mass-casualty accidents. 24 hours, by telephone or fax, to the licensing agency and — when appropriate — the local health officer. Note the threat may be to personnel or visitors, not only residents.
22 CCR §87211(a)(3) — Fires and explosions
Fires or explosions which occur in or on the premises shall be reported immediately to the local fire authority; in areas not having organized fire services, within 24 hours to the State Fire Marshal; and no later than the next working day to the licensing agency.
Three separate deadlines to three different bodies. Immediately to the local fire authority; within 24 hours to the State Fire Marshal only where there is no organized fire service; and to the licensing agency no later than the next working day.
22 CCR §87211(b) — Suspected physical abuse WITH serious bodily injury — 2 hours
Any suspected physical abuse that results in serious bodily injury of an elder or dependent adult shall be reported to the local ombudsman, the corresponding licensing agency, and the local law enforcement agency within two (2) hours as required by Welfare and Institutions Code Section 15630(b)(1).
The two-hour clock. All three recipients — local Long-Term Care Ombudsman, licensing agency, local law enforcement. 'Serious bodily injury' is defined at WIC §15610.67. Suspicion is the trigger; the facility does not need to have concluded that abuse occurred. File SOC 341 as the written report.
22 CCR §87211(c) — Suspected physical abuse WITHOUT serious bodily injury — 24 hours
Any suspected physical abuse that does not result in serious bodily injury of an elder or dependent adult shall be reported to the local ombudsman, the corresponding licensing agency, and the local law enforcement agency within twenty-four (24) hours as required by Welfare and Institutions Code Section 15630(b)(1).
Same three recipients as (b), 24 hours instead of two, when the suspected physical abuse did not cause serious bodily injury. A faded mark, a grab, or a bruise of unknown origin still lands here. File SOC 341.
22 CCR §87211(d) — Facility financial distress — two business days
The licensee shall notify the Department, the State Long-Term Care Ombudsman, all residents, and, if applicable, their representatives, in writing within two business days of any of the following specified events, or knowledge thereof: (1) A notice of default, notice of trustee's sale, or any other indication of foreclosure is issued on the property. (2) An unlawful detainer action is initiated against the licensee. (3) The licensee files for bankruptcy. (4) The licensee receives a written notice of default of payment of rent described in Section 1161 of the Code of Civil Procedure. (5) A utility company has sent a notice of intent to terminate electricity, gas, or water service on the property within not more than 15 days of the notice.
This is about the licensee's own solvency, not about resident incidents. It is not filed on LIC 624, LIC 624A or SOC 341, and ClearReport does not produce it — the duty is on the operator directly. (e) extends the same disclosure to prospective residents, and (f) sets the penalty.
22 CCR §87211(e) — Disclosure of financial distress to prospective residents
The licensee shall notify in writing all applicants for potential residence, and, if applicable, the representatives, prior to signing an admission agreement, of any of the events, or knowledge of events specified in Section 87211(d).
The admissions-side counterpart to (d). Not an incident report and not produced by ClearReport.
22 CCR §87211(f) — Penalty for failing to give the (d) / (e) notices
Failure to comply with Section 87211(d), or Section 87211(e), or both, may result in a civil penalty of one hundred dollars ($100) for each day of the failure to provide the required notification, not to exceed two thousand dollars ($2,000). (1) If a resident is relocated without the specified notification, and the resident suffers transfer trauma as defined in Section 87101, or other harm to their health or safety, the Department may suspend or revoke the license or other specified actions pursuant to Health and Safety Code section 1569.686(c).
Penalty provision for the financial-distress notices only. It does not set a penalty for late incident reports — those consequences come from the citation and civil-penalty structure in the Health and Safety Code, not from this subsection.
22 CCR §87211(g) — New administrator — 30 days
The licensee shall notify the Department, in writing, within thirty (30) days of the hiring of a new administrator. The notification shall include the following: (1) Name and residence and mailing addresses of the new administrator. (2) Date he/she assumed his/her position. (3) Description of his/her background and qualifications, including documentation of required education and administrator certification. (A) A photocopy of the documentation is acceptable.
An administrative-change notice, not an incident report. Note this in particular: (g) has nothing to do with deaths or abuse. It was one of the identifiers the model fabricated onto a hospice-death answer in #182.
22 CCR §87211(h) — Change of chief corporate officer — 15 working days
Any change in the chief corporate officer of an organization, corporation or association shall be reported to the licensing agency in writing within fifteen (15) working days following such change. Such notification shall include the name, address and the fingerprint card of the new chief executive officer, as required by Section 87355, Criminal Record Clearance.
Corporate-governance notice. Not an incident report.
Which form goes with which event
§87211 never names a form. These are the CDSS and CDSS/Adult Protective Services forms the field uses for each duty, and the three ClearReport produces.
| Form | Use it for | Driving subsection |
|---|---|---|
| LIC 624 — Unusual Incident / Injury Report | Serious injury, AED use, and any incident threatening resident welfare, safety or health — falls with injury, elopement, medication errors that put a resident at risk, resident-on-resident altercations | §87211(a)(1)(B), (C), (D) |
| LIC 624A — Death Report | Any resident death, whatever the cause and wherever it happened | §87211(a)(1)(A) |
| SOC 341 — Report of Suspected Dependent Adult / Elder Abuse | Suspected physical, sexual, financial or psychological abuse, neglect, abandonment, isolation, or abduction | §87211(b) and (c), with WIC §15630 |
The one that trips people up: an event can look like a LIC 624 and actually be a SOC 341. If the reason for the injury is a suspicion that somebody hurt the resident, it is an abuse report on the (b) or (c) clock, and the SOC 341 is the form that asks whether there was serious bodily injury — the question that decides between two hours and twenty-four.
Who you actually call
Depending on the subsection, up to five different bodies are in play: the CDSS Community Care Licensing regional office that holds your license, the local Long-Term Care Ombudsman, local law enforcement, the local health officer, and the local fire authority or State Fire Marshal.
We deliberately do not print phone numbers on this page. The CDSS Adult & Senior Care regional office directory is reissued several times a year, offices move and merge, and a stale number for a two-hour statutory notification is worse than no number at all. Post your facility's current numbers by the phone, and re-verify them against the CDSS directory on a schedule.
Inside ClearReport this is handled by data rather than memory: your facility's CDSS regional office is resolved from its license number against the state's own licensed-facility dataset, and each contact is shown with the official source it came from and the date it was last verified.
How ClearReport computes these deadlines
So you can check our arithmetic against your own reading, here are the exact rules the product applies. Every clock is anchored to the incident date and time in California local time (America/Los_Angeles), including across daylight-saving transitions, and “working day” means Monday through Friday.
LIC 624 — unusual incident
- Always: written report to the licensing agency, due 7 calendar days after the incident date.
- If the incident type is an abuse category: an additional 24-hour deadline to the ombudsman, licensing, and law enforcement, and the form steers you to the SOC 341 — which is the correct form, and the one that collects the serious-bodily-injury answer the 2-hour rule in (b) depends on.
- Elopement or unauthorized absence: an additional telephone report to the licensing agency, due the next working day.
- Epidemic outbreak: an additional telephone or fax report to the licensing agency and the local health officer, due 24 hours after the incident.
- Fire: immediate report to the local fire authority; a report to the State Fire Marshal within 24 hours if there is no local fire service; and a telephone report to the licensing agency by the next working day.
LIC 624A — death
- Verbal notification to licensing, the placement agency, and the responsible persons, due the next working day.
- Written death report to the licensing agency, due 7 calendar days after the death.
- If a coroner's report is pending: a copy to the licensing agency, due 30 days after the death.
SOC 341 — suspected abuse
- Physical abuse with serious bodily injury, in a licensed facility: verbal report to law enforcement, the ombudsman, and licensing within 2 hours, then a written report to the same three within 24 hours.
- Physical abuse without serious bodily injury, in a licensed facility: written report to the ombudsman, licensing, and law enforcement within 24 hours.
- All other abuse: telephone report to Adult Protective Services or law enforcement as soon as practicable, and a written report within 2 working days.
- If the place-of-incident field is left blank, the product assumes the licensed-facility branch — the stricter deadline. A skipped dropdown must never relax a statutory clock.
Questions administrators actually ask
- Is there a two-hour reporting rule in §87211?
- Yes, but only for one thing. §87211(b) gives you two hours when you suspect physical abuse of an elder or dependent adult that resulted in serious bodily injury. The report goes to three places — the local Long-Term Care Ombudsman, the licensing agency, and local law enforcement. Suspected physical abuse without serious bodily injury is twenty-four hours under §87211(c). Nothing in §87211(a) — deaths, serious injuries, AED use, welfare-threatening incidents — carries a two-hour clock.
- Do I have to report a resident death that happened at the hospital?
- Yes. §87211(a)(1)(A) covers the death of any resident from any cause regardless of where the death occurred, and names a day program, a hospital, being en route to or from a hospital, and visiting away from the facility as examples. An expected death on hospice is still a death of a resident. The written report is due within seven days, on a LIC 624A.
- Which injuries count as a “serious injury”?
- §87211(a)(1)(B) puts that call on the attending physician, not on the facility: a serious injury is one “as determined by the attending physician” that occurred while the resident was under facility supervision. In practice that means you document the injury, get the physician's determination, and report if it comes back serious. If the physician has not weighed in yet and the seven-day clock is running, file rather than wait.
- Is a resident who wandered off an §87211 report?
- Yes. §87211(a)(1)(D) names “unexplained absence of any resident” as an example of an incident threatening resident welfare, safety, or health, which puts it on the seven-day written report. Separately, if your facility uses delayed egress devices under §87705(e), that section requires you to tell the resident's representative immediately and the licensing agency Officer of the Day no later than the next working day, with the written report still made under §87211.
- What happens if I miss a §87211 deadline?
- §87211 itself sets a money penalty only for the financial-distress notices in (d) and (e) — one hundred dollars per day, capped at two thousand, under §87211(f). A late or missing incident report is instead handled as a licensing deficiency: an analyst cites the violation, issues a plan of correction with a due date, and civil penalties escalate under the Health and Safety Code if it is not corrected or if it repeats. The practical exposure is usually the pattern, not the one report.
- If I already called the ombudsman and law enforcement, do I still file a written report?
- Yes. The verbal call and the written report are separate duties with separate clocks. §87211(a)(1) requires a written report within seven days for the (A)–(D) events, and it must go to the person responsible for the resident as well as to the licensing agency. Calling somebody does not close out the written obligation, and the written report is the document an analyst asks for at the next visit.
- Does §87211 tell me to file a LIC 624 or a SOC 341?
- Neither, by name. §87211 sets the duty and the deadline; the forms come from CDSS and from the elder-abuse reporting statute. In practice: LIC 624 for an unusual incident or injury, LIC 624A for a death, and SOC 341 for suspected abuse or neglect of an elder or dependent adult. When an event is both — a resident-on-resident assault, say — it is a SOC 341 on the (b)/(c) clock, because the SOC 341 is the form that captures whether there was serious bodily injury.
- Who is the “licensing agency” I report to?
- For an RCFE it is the CDSS Community Care Licensing Division office that holds your license — one of the Adult & Senior Care regional offices, assigned by where your facility is. Which office is yours is a property of your license number, not something you should guess from a list on a marketing page. ClearReport resolves it from your license number using the state's own licensed-facility data and shows the current office on the report.
Filing this next week?
ClearReport builds the LIC 624, LIC 624A, and SOC 341 from a plain description of what happened, computes each deadline above from the incident time in California time, and resolves which CDSS regional office your facility reports to from its license number. Your first facility includes a 30-day free trial, no card required.