Cost Of Home-based Care Services Spiked In 2024

Home-based care was one of many long-term care services that experienced cost increases last year.

That’s according to a 2024 Cost of Care survey conducted by Genworth and CareScout, for which Genworth reached out to over 140,000 long-term care providers across the country to complete more than 15,000 surveys for nursing homes, assisted living communities, adult day health facilities and home care providers from July to December 2024.

Overall, the increase for most forms of long-term care services continued to outpace inflation.

Plus, labor costs were the biggest contributor to cost increases.

“As we built the CareScout Quality Network, we spoke with hundreds of care providers who shared that inflation and labor costs continue to drive rate increases,” Samir Shah, president and CEO CareScout Services, said in a press statement. “If you couple these economic factors with the growing demand for long-term care services as the Baby Boomer generation ages, families are challenged to find high-quality long-term care at affordable prices.”

On the home-based care side, aide services went up by 3% to an annual median cost of $77,792. These services included personal assistance with activities with things like bathing, dressing, and eating.

Homemaker services — under the home-based care umbrella — spiked by 10% to an annual median cost of $75,504. These services included assistance with tasks such as cooking, cleaning and running errands.

“Driving the outsized increase in homemaker services is the compression between home health aide and homemaker service rates,” Genworth wrote. “Two-thirds of home care agencies surveyed now charge the same rate for both types of service, where the less clinical homemaker tasks historically have demanded lower rates.”

The survey also found that the annual national median cost for adult day care was $26,000, a 5% increase over the previous year.

Meanwhile, assisted living community costs went up by 10% to an annual national median cost of $70,800 per year, and the national annual median cost of a semi-private room in a nursing home increased to $111,325, an increase of 7%. The cost of a private room in a nursing home jumped 9% to $127,750.

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