Description of Business

9 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2011

DESCRIPTION OF BUSINESS [Abstract]

Organization, Consolidation and Presentation of Financial Statements Disclosure [Text Block]

DESCRIPTION OF BUSINESS

The Company — The Ensign Group, Inc., through its subsidiaries (collectively, Ensign or the Company), provides skilled nursing and rehabilitative care services through the operation of 99 facilities, four home health and three hospice operations as of September 30, 2011, located in California, Arizona, Texas, Washington, Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Nebraska, and Iowa. All of these facilities are skilled nursing facilities, other than seven stand-alone assisted living facilities in California, Arizona, Texas, Colorado and Nevada and 11 campuses that offer both skilled nursing and assisted living services located in California, Texas, Arizona, Utah, Nebraska, and Iowa. The Company’s facilities, each of which strives to be the facility of choice in the community it serves, provide a broad spectrum of skilled nursing and assisted living services, physical, occupational and speech therapies, and other rehabilitative and healthcare services, for both long-term residents and short-stay rehabilitation patients. The Company’s facilities have a collective capacity of approximately 11,500 operational skilled nursing, assisted living and independent living beds. As of September 30, 2011, the Company owned 72 of its 99 facilities and operated an additional 27 facilities through long-term lease arrangements, and had options to purchase six of those 27 facilities.

The Ensign Group, Inc. is a holding company with no direct operating assets, employees or revenue. All of the Company’s facilities are operated by separate, wholly-owned, independent subsidiaries, each of which has its own management, employees and assets. One of the Company’s wholly-owned subsidiaries, referred to as the Service Center, provides centralized accounting, payroll, human resources, information technology, legal, risk management and other centralized services to the other operating subsidiaries through contractual relationships with such subsidiaries. The Company also has a wholly-owned captive insurance subsidiary (the Captive) that provides some claims-made coverage to the Company’s operating subsidiaries for general and professional liability, as well as coverage for certain workers’ compensation insurance liabilities.

Like the Company’s facilities, the Service Center and the Captive are operated by separate, wholly-owned, independent subsidiaries that have their own management, employees and assets. References herein to the consolidated “Company” and “its” assets and activities, as well as the use of the terms “we,” “us,” “our” and similar verbiage in this quarterly report is not meant to imply that The Ensign Group, Inc. has direct operating assets, employees or revenue, or that any of the facilities, the Service Center or the Captive are operated by the same entity.

Other Information — The accompanying condensed consolidated financial statements as of September 30, 2011 and for the three and nine months endedSeptember 30, 2011 and 2010 (collectively, the Interim Financial Statements), are unaudited. Certain information and footnote disclosures normally included in annual consolidated financial statements have been condensed or omitted, as permitted under applicable rules and regulations. Readers of the Interim Financial Statements should refer to the Company’s audited consolidated statements and notes thereto for the year ended December 31, 2010 which are included in the Company’s annual report on Form 10-K, File No. 001-33757 (the Annual Report) filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC). Management believes that the Interim Financial Statements reflect all adjustments which are of a normal and recurring nature necessary to present fairly the Company’s financial position and results of operations in all material respects. The results of operations presented in the Interim Financial Statements are not necessarily representative of operations for the entire year.