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What a nursing home costs
Medicare does not pay for long-term custodial care. Here is what a nursing home costs by the published survey medians, and what the research measured about the cost of dementia care.
Estimate the cost where you live → Pick your state and the kind of care; the cost page prices a year from the published rates.What it costs: the published figures
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National median annual cost of a private room in a nursing home Measured
129,575 USD per year
$355/day; $10,798/month. Up 1% from 2024. Not dementia-specific.
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National median annual cost of a semi-private room in a nursing home Measured
114,975 USD per year
$315/day; $9,581/month; up 2% from 2024 ($9,277/month).
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National median annual cost of an assisted living community Measured
74,400 USD per year
$6,200/month, up 5% from $5,900 in 2024. Memory-care premium not broken out on this page.
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National median hourly rate for a non-medical in-home caregiver (home health aide / homemaker) Measured
35 USD per hour
Up 3% year over year. Skilled nursing in the home $90/hour. Facts and Figures 2026 cites the 2024 survey: home health aide $34/hr, $6,483/month; adult day services $100/day.
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National median daily cost of adult day services Measured
100 USD per day
$104 in 2025 dollars; grew 5.6%/yr 2021-2024 before inflation adjustment.
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Median annual out-of-pocket nursing home expenditure among the 31% of people with severe dementia who incurred nursing home expenditures Measured
4,118 USD (2023 dollars)
$4,345 in 2025 dollars. Moderate dementia with nursing home expenditures: median $40,165 ($42,378 in 2025 dollars).
These are national medians from a provider survey: half of the providers charged more and half charged less, and prices vary a great deal by state. Medicaid, which decides who pays, has different rules in every state. Treat them as a sense of scale, not a quote.
What the research library holds
119 of the library's 27,380 studies match; 41 have it in the title. The 8 shown are the title matches first, then the highest-scoring.
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Monetary costs of dementia in the United States
Dementia represents a substantial financial burden on society, one that is similar to the financial burden of heart disease and cancer.
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Cost of dementia in Medicare managed care: a systematic literature review
Despite the growth in Medicare managed care enrollment, only 9 papers report the costs of care for individuals with ADRD within these plans, and only 1 study reports data less than 10 years old.
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Monetary Costs of Dementia in the United States
Using a nationally representative survey of older Americans with in-home cognitive testing, researchers estimated that dementia cost the US between $157 billion and $215 billion in 2010, depending on how unpaid family caregiving time is valued.
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The cost of Alzheimer's disease in China and re-estimation of costs worldwide
China bears a heavy burden of AD costs, which greatly change the estimates of AD cost worldwide.
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Cost-effectiveness of the Namaste care family program for nursing home residents with advanced dementia in comparison with usual care: a cluster-randomized controlled trial
The Namaste Care Family program is dominant over usual care and, thus, cost-effective, although statistical uncertainty was considerable.
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Government expenditures at the end of life for short- and long-stay nursing home residents: differences by hospice enrollment status
Overall, hospice care in NHs does not appear to increase government expenditures.
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Hospice effect on government expenditures among nursing home residents
Hospice enrollment results in lower combined Medicare/Medicaid expenditures in the last month of life, particularly among short-stay NH residents.
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Informal costs of dementia care: estimates from the National Longitudinal Caregiver Study
This study provides a comprehensive estimate of the excess costs that result from providing informal dementia care in the community.
How a study gets onto this list: its own title, summary, findings or note contains one of these terms — nursing home together with cost, spending, price or out-of-pocket; long-term care costs; out-of-pocket; the monetary or societal cost of dementia. A study matched only in its text is shown with the sentence that matched, word for word. A score rates how much weight a study can bear, not whether its result is good news: how we score a study.
Where to go next
Where the cost figures come from
- Records behind this page
- 6
- Distinct sources
- 3
- Years covered
- 2023–2025
- Basis
- 6 measured · 0 modelled · 0 not stated
- Data collected
- 2026-09-21
- Source files
- economics.json (153 KB, 211 rows)
Most-cited sources on this page
- CareScout (Genworth) Cost of Care Survey 2025 (4 records)
- Alzheimer's Association 2026 Facts and Figures, citing Genworth/CareScout 2024 Cost of Care Survey (1 record)
- Alzheimer's Association, 2026 Alzheimer's Disease Facts and Figures (Use and Costs section, citing ref. 921) (1 record)
What could make these numbers misleading
These are national medians from a provider survey: half of the providers charged more and half charged less, and prices vary a great deal by state. Medicaid, which decides who pays, has different rules in every state. Treat them as a sense of scale, not a quote.
Every figure on this page is read straight out of a file in our data folder; nothing is typed in by hand. You can download the raw data and check any row yourself. This is a summary of published research, not medical advice.