About the Data

Who produces this data

The cost estimates, provider records, and rankings on this site are produced by ElderCareCosts Research, the in-house data desk of ElderCareCosts. The desk builds and runs the ingestion pipelines, maintains the entity-resolution rules that decide when two records are the same provider, reviews every cost-model change before it ships, and answers correction requests.

We publish under the desk name rather than individual bylines. The accountable party for any figure on this site is ElderCareCosts Research, reachable at the address below. That is deliberate. A byline on a page built from a pipeline would credit the wrong thing, and it would hand you a name that cannot actually answer a question about how a number was derived. The desk can.

What the desk publishes

• Modeled cost estimates for assisted living, nursing homes, in-home care, home health care, memory care, and adult day care, at national, state, and metro level. These are estimates built from published survey medians and government wage data, not price quotes.
• Licensed provider records sourced from CMS and state licensing registries, including inspection and ownership data where the source publishes it.
• Program and benefit explainers covering Medicaid, veterans benefits, and other ways families pay.

How those figures are derived is documented in full on the methodology page. The upstream sources, their license status, and how often we retrieve them are listed on data sources.

Independence and funding

ElderCareCosts is a commercial site. We earn money from clearly disclosed referral connections, sponsorships, and links, explained on how we make money.

No provider, advertiser, or sponsor can change a cost figure, alter a rating, raise a ranking, or have a listing removed for unflattering inspection results. Commercial relationships have no input into the cost model or the provider data, and the people who sell are not the people who publish. Where a page carries a commercial element, it is labeled on that page. Our editorial standards spell out the separation.

Corrections policy

We publish corrections rather than quietly editing. If a figure, a provider record, or a statement of fact is wrong, tell us and we will fix it or explain why we think it is right.

• Report an error using the report form, linked from every data page, or email the desk directly.
• We acknowledge correction requests within five business days and tell you what we found, including when the answer is that the source itself is wrong and we have to go back upstream.
• Resolved corrections are logged on the corrections page with what changed and when.
• When a data error affected a published figure, the page carries an updated date, so a citation made earlier can be checked against what the page says now.

Permitted reuse

Figures published on this site may be quoted and reproduced with attribution and a link back to the page they came from. No permission request, no license fee. That covers news articles, academic work, government and nonprofit reports, presentations, and classroom use.

Every data page carries a formatted citation you can copy, in APA and Chicago, along with the date it was last updated. Charts and tables can be embedded with the attribution link built into the snippet. What we ask in return is that you cite the specific page rather than the site as a whole, because figures differ by state, metro, and care type, and that you keep the access date, because these numbers are updated.

How to reach the desk

Email [email protected]. It is a monitored inbox that reaches the research desk, not a form that goes nowhere.

We answer questions about how a figure was derived, which vintage of source data sits behind it, and what a number does and does not cover. Journalists working to a deadline should say so in the subject line and we will prioritize it. Researchers who need a cut of the data that is not published on the site should describe what they need and what it is for.

We are not doctors, lawyers, or financial advisors. This site is information, not advice about an individual situation.