Costa Rica · Central America · care layer opened 2026-08-14
The Ministerio de Salud accredits care establishments — CONAPAM is the council, not the licensor
Costa Rica is one of the destinations on this site where we have opened a primary source on elder-care regulation with our own eyes. The cells below are not price estimates: each one is a publisher we can name, with the month we read it. The retirement visa most people start from here is Pensionado ($1,000/mo pension).
Article 18 of Ley N° 7935 lists the actions of the Ministerio de Salud, and subsection (d) is the operative one: to grant the accreditation under which establishments and care programmes for older persons operate — "Otorgar la acreditación para que funcionen los establecimientos y los programas de atención a las personas adultas mayores". CONAPAM, the Consejo Nacional de la Persona Adulta Mayor, is the body this same law creates, and it is CONAPAM's own website that publishes the PDF, which is why it is easy to assume CONAPAM issues the permit. On the wording of Article 18 it does not.
A single consolidated PDF carrying the law of 25 October 1999 and the implementing regulation after it, with the later amending statutes folded in. Reading them in one file matters here because the law states who accredits and the regulation states on what terms.
No public list of accredited establishments could be opened. Naming the body that grants an accreditation is not the same as being able to check whether a particular home holds one, and only the first of those two things is published here.
Why Costa Rica shows up in retirement searches
Costa Rica pairs Panama's playbook — a $1,000/mo Pensionado and territorial tax — with lusher hills and a three-year run to permanent residency. Two honest catches: every resident pays the CCSS health levy, about 9–11% of declared pension, and processing has been running 8–14 months. The Ministry of Health accredits care establishments under Ley 7935 — CONAPAM is the council, not the licensor; no public accredited list was opened. Pura vida is real; so is the paperwork queue.
That context matters for care because the same decision that picks Costa Rica for cost or climate is the one that later has to find a licensed facility — and whether a public register even exists is the part of that decision that can be checked before anyone flies.
Contract clauses that exclude custodial care — quoted with page numbers — live once on the care hub, not on each country page, so the wording is not pasted 14 times.