Anchor Care Consulting
Assisted Living Mentor
Guiding Communities. Growing Leaders. Supporting Care.
For over 40 years, Kathy has dedicated her life to caring for others — from long-term care in 1986 to owning and operating multiple assisted living homes in rural Colorado for more than two decades. Today she shares that experience through consulting, QMAP training, and a growing library of real-world resources.
Kathy's journey started at sixteen years old, drawn to a nursing home not because it was practical, but because she understood in some wordless way that this was something she could build a life around. Forty years later, that hasn't changed.
From CNA to nurse, from administrator to owner, Kathy eventually owned and operated four assisted living facilities simultaneously — including two she opened in 2020, during COVID, when her bank offered her a clean exit and she stayed anyway. "Walking away was not an option our values allowed," she says.
But caregiving was never the whole story. Kathy is also a lifelong serial entrepreneur — gift baskets on the early AOL internet, cake mixes, medical billing, advertising sales, earrings, a Paint and Sip class at a local winery she built from scratch before anyone had a name for it. She built it, proved it worked, and handed it off. That's the serial entrepreneur's way.
In 2026, she founded Anchor Care Consulting — and wrote a book about all of it. Because every business really does teach you the next one.
Every one of those ventures taught me something I used in the next one. The learning compounds. The ventures aren't random. They never were. They're an education you couldn't have gotten any other way.
— Kathy Swanstrom, from Every Business Teaches You the Next OneKathy has written two books about the entrepreneurial life — Every Business Teaches You the Next One and its companion, Be Present. Two sides of the same coin: what the restless, building brain builds, and what it costs. Learn more →
CDPHE Chapter 7 & Chapter 24 expertise. Mock surveys, compliance audits, and operational assessments to identify risk before it becomes a citation.
Custom policies and procedures aligned with Colorado state requirements — practical, readable, and ready for surveyors.
Actionable Plans of Correction developed with your team to achieve sustained compliance — not just a quick fix for the surveyor.
Colorado State-Approved QMAP Instructor. Online course plus live virtual testing class. Individual and group enrollment available.
System setup, workflow optimization, and staff training for Medicaid billing — grounded in real experience managing billing at multiple facilities.
Helping new assisted living homes get licensed, build compliant operational systems, and open with confidence from day one.
Training programs in medication administration, documentation standards, and regulatory expectations — building staff competency that sticks.
Operational guidance and coaching for administrators and management teams navigating the daily demands of running a care community.
Building structured systems for incident tracking, quality assurance, and documentation that protects residents and the facility.
Kathy has worked in nearly every role in long-term care — which means she understands the challenges from every angle.
Whether you need compliance support, staff training, or a trusted partner to help you navigate a difficult survey — Kathy is ready to help.