Minnesota, Alaska Have Most Expensive Home Care in U.S.

By Mary Kate Nelson, Home Health Care News, April 27, 2016

When it comes to hiring a home health aide, where you live matters. That’s because the cost of hiring home health aides varies enormously by state, a new analysis from Lincoln Financial Group (NYSE: LNC) reveals.

The most expensive states in which to hire a home health aide, as measured by their average fee per hour, are Minnesota and Alaska, with home health aides charging $29 per hour and $28 per hour, respectively. In North Dakota and Hawaii, home health aides charge an average of $27 per hour; in Iowa, they charge an average of $26 per hour.

The least expensive states in which to hire a home health aide, meanwhile, are Louisiana and Mississippi, where their fee averages $17 per hour. Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina and West Virginia, are tied for second place; in those states, home health aides’ fee averages $19 per hour.

Nationally, the average fee for a home health aide in 2015 was $22 an hour, which amounts to a cost of $46,000 annually based on 40 hours of care per week, the analysis shows.

Additionally, home health care costs tend to increase if a home health aide is a nurse. The national average fee for a registered nurse is $83 per hour, while the national average fee for a licensed nurse is $66 per hour, Lincoln Financial Group says.

Lincoln Financial Group, the Radnor, Pennsylvania-based arm of Lincoln National Corporation, compiled this and other long-term care data on a new website, whatcarecosts.com. It is meant to serve as a searchable database of long-term-care cost information for states and metropolitan areas across the country. The data can be filtered by geography and type of care.