America’s long-term care services got more expensive in 2024 across all care types, according to research released last week by Genworth and its CareScout unit.
The increase for most types of care continued to outpace inflation, the report said.
The research findings were based a survey conducted from to July to December among 15,000 nursing homes, assisted living communities, adult day health facilities and home care providers.
The survey responses indicated that inflation contributed most to cost increases for assisted living communities, nursing homes and adult day care centers. For home care services, labor costs were the top contributing factor to cost increases.
Cost of Care
The 2024 survey found that the cost of a home health aide, which includes “hands-on” personal assistance with activities such as bathing, dressing and eating, has increased by 3% to an annual median cost of $77,792, based on 44 hours per week for 52 weeks.
Homemaker services — assistance with “hands-off” tasks such as cooking, cleaning and running errands — have gone up by 10% to an annual median cost of $75,504, based on the same number of hours.
The research showed that the compression between home health aide and homemaker services rates drove the outsize increase in homemaker services. Two-thirds of home care agency respondents reported that they now charge the same rate for both types of service, whereas historically the less clinical homemaker tasks have demanded lower rates.
The annual national median cost for adult day care was $26,000 based on five days of care a week for 52 weeks, a 5% year-over-year increase.
Assisted living community costs rose by 10% to an annual national median cost of $70,800 per year. Occupancy rates increased from 77% in 2023 to 84%, which may be pressuring supply and driving higher rates, the report said.
The national annual median cost of a semi-private room in a nursing home rose to $111,325, up by 7%, while the cost of a private room in a nursing home increased by 9% to $127,750.
The Ranking
ThinkAdvisor averaged Genworth's state-by-state rankings of the annual costs of in-home services, assisted living facilities and nursing home beds to create an overall ranking of the states. Genworth does not list adult day care costs in each state as this care type is less prevalent, a company spokesman said.
See the gallery for the 12 most-expensive states for long-term care, according to our analysis of Genworth's Cost of Care Survey.
© Arc, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to TMSalesOperations@arc-network.com. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.