Where the Locked Memory Care Beds Are Around Knoxville, Area by Area

Why we used the bed report

"Memory care" is a marketing term. In Tennessee it has no license of its own. What does have legal meaning is a secured unit: a distinct part of an assisted-care living facility where residents are deliberately kept from leaving except as fire safety requires. Every licensed building reports its secured beds to the Health Facilities Commission each quarter.

That makes the bed report the closest thing to an official map of dementia care in East Tennessee. Nursing homes report secured and Alzheimer's beds the same way.

The numbers by area

The table counts ACLFs with secured beds, their secured beds, and secured or Alzheimer's beds in nursing homes, for each part of Knox County and each city with its own page on this site.

Two things stand out. North Knoxville, Fountain City and Halls, together with Powell, hold more secured assisted living beds than West Knoxville and Farragut combined, even though the west side has more assisted living overall. And outside Knox County, secured beds are concentrated in a handful of buildings, so a family in Loudon or Sevier County may have only one or two local choices.

Stand-alone memory care buildings

8 ACLFs in the seven counties report every licensed bed as secured: Avenir Memory Care at Knoxville in Farragut (62 beds), Emory Ridge in Powell (60 beds), The Courtyards Senior Living-Knoxville in Knoxville (32 beds), The Courtyards Senior Living-Knoxville 3 in Knoxville (57 beds), The Lantern at Morning Pointe Alzheimer's Center (Powell) in Powell (52 beds), The Lantern at Morning Pointe of Hardin Valley in Knoxville (70 beds), The Lantern at Morning Pointe Alzheimer's Center in Lenoir City (49 beds), Spring Arbor of Sevierville in Sevierville (56 beds).

A stand-alone building is designed entirely around dementia. A secured wing in a larger community lets a couple live on one campus, or lets a resident move from open assisted living to memory care without changing staff. Neither is better by rule; both must meet the same Tennessee requirements.

The largest secured units

By secured beds, the largest units are The Lantern at Morning Pointe of Hardin Valley (70 of 70 beds); Emory Mills Senior Living (65 of 111 beds); Avenir Memory Care at Knoxville (62 of 62 beds); Emory Ridge (60 of 60 beds); The Courtyards Senior Living-Knoxville 3 (57 of 57 beds).

Size matters less than staffing. Tennessee requires one awake attendant physically on the unit at all times and no numeric ratio beyond that, so ask every unit, large or small, how many people work there overnight.

Memory care in nursing homes

Seven nursing homes in the seven counties also report secured beds on the state's bed report. Those units serve people with dementia who also need nursing care, such as residents with complex medical conditions or those who can no longer walk or transfer safely. Their CMS records, including staffing hours and inspection results, are on each home's page.

Families sometimes move a parent from an assisted living secured unit to a nursing home secured unit as needs grow. Asking both settings early how they handle that transition avoids surprises.

Cost and payment

No official memory care price median exists for Tennessee, because CareScout does not survey memory care separately. Expect secured units to cost more than open assisted living in the same community. Ask for an all-inclusive written quote and what triggers an increase. TennCare CHOICES treats secured-unit care as Assisted Care Living Facility services for eligible members at participating communities, with room and board still paid by the resident.

What to do with this map

Start from where the most involved family member lives. Visiting often in the first months of a memory care move makes a real difference to how a parent settles. Then use the memory care roster on this site to compare survey dates and enforcement history for the units within a reasonable drive.

On the tour, ask to see the unit's daily staffing record, the activity calendar with attendance, and the schedule of quarterly placement reviews. The rule requires all three, so a community should be able to produce them.