California Assisted Living Waiver MCP server

A read-only Model Context Protocol server for California Medi-Cal Assisted Living Waiver (ALW) data. It lets AI assistants query 1,224 public DHCS participating-provider records, compare the 15 counties where ALW operates, and retrieve statewide enrollment and waitlist figures with their source and interpretation limits intact.

The server bundles a versioned, CC BY 4.0 data release and makes no network requests at runtime.

Why this exists

Administrative ALW data is easy to misstate. In particular:

• DHCS publishes one statewide waitlist, not county waitlists.
• Licensed participant-enrollment-unit capacity is not live vacancy.
• Rows are provider records, not guaranteed unique facility-license records.

The tools and server instructions preserve those distinctions so an assistant can answer questions without inventing finer-grained availability data.

Run from GitHub

Node.js 20 or newer is required.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "california-alw": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "github:asafichaki/california-alw-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

For a zero-install documentation and source-search endpoint, connect an MCP-compatible assistant to https://gitmcp.io/asafichaki/california-alw-mcp.

For a local checkout:

npm install
npm start

Tools

Tool	Purpose
get_program_summary	Statewide figures, record count, capacity, dates, sources, license, and cautions
list_counties	All participating counties with provider-record counts and licensed capacity
get_county_summary	One county's totals, median record capacity, and largest provider records
search_facilities	Search public DHCS records by name, address, provider number, county, city, or ZIP
get_methodology_and_citation	Provenance, normalization method, limitations, disclosure, and citation

The server also exposes alw://methodology and alw://counties resources plus a compare_alw_counties prompt.

Example questions

• How many participating ALW provider records are in San Diego County?
• Compare licensed ALW capacity in Orange and Riverside counties.
• Find participating records in ZIP code 95823.
• What does the statewide waitlist number mean, and what does it not mean?
• Give me the methodology and citation for these figures.

Sources and attribution

The original facility records come from the California Department of Health Care Services ALW GIS dataset. Statewide enrollment and waitlist figures come from the DHCS ALW reporting surface documented in the release metadata.

The prepared release, methodology, direct downloads, and human-readable county breakdown are published by California Care Compass:

• California ALW County Availability Tracker 2026
• Versioned open-data repository

Suggested citation:

California Care Compass. California ALW County Availability Tracker 2026, version 2026.1. https://californiacarecompass.com/data/california-alw-county-tracker-2026

California Care Compass is a senior-care information and referral service. Families are not billed directly; a licensed facility may pay a one-time referral fee, disclosed before any tour.

Development

npm install
npm run check

The test suite verifies the published dataset invariants and starts a real MCP client over stdio to discover and call the server tools.

Licenses

• Server code: MIT
• Bundled prepared data: CC BY 4.0