The costs for long-term care spiked again, especially for home health aides – but home-based care is still vastly less expensive than nursing home care, according to the "Genworth 2017 Cost of Care Survey," based on data collected from more than 15,000 completed surveys by long-term care providers nationwide.

The annual median cost of long-term care services increased an average of 4.5 percent from 2016 to 2017, the second-highest year-over-year increase for nursing homes and home care since the study began in 2004 and nearly three times the 1.7 percent U.S. rate of inflation, according to the survey, conducted by Carescout on behalf of Genworth Financial Inc.

The rate of increase is highest for home health aides: home health aide services, up 6.17 percent to $21.50/hour; homemaker services, up 4.75 percent to $21/hour; and adult day health care services, up 2.94 percent to $70/day.

Continue Reading for Free

Register and gain access to:

  • Breaking benefits news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical converage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.

Katie Kuehner-Hebert

Katie Kuehner-Hebert is a freelance writer based in Running Springs, Calif. She has more than three decades of journalism experience, with particular expertise in employee benefits and other human resource topics.