How We Source Our In-Home Care Cost Figures — and What We Refuse to Publish

Senior care cost content is, as a category, badly sourced. Figures circulate for years with no origin, get attributed to surveys that never published them at that geographic level, and get re-dated annually without anyone re-checking. Since these are numbers families use to make irreversible financial decisions, here is our whole hand.

The rule we hold ourselves to: every number that appears anywhere in this section is declared in one config file with a source, a year and a geographic scope, and the build fails if a figure has no resolvable source. Nothing is typed directly into a page.

Every figure we publish

Where our own arithmetic appears

Two places, both labeled on the page where they appear. The monthly-cost-by-hours table multiplies the sourced Nevada median by hours, by 52 weeks, divided by 12 months. And the Medicaid hourly equivalent is four 15-minute units at the published unit rate. Neither is a surveyed figure and we do not present them as one.

Figures we will not publish

This is the more useful list. Each of these is something you will find on competing sites, presented as fact.

A Las Vegas metro hourly figure from CareScout or Genworth

CareScout collects rates at the metro level but publishes only state medians in its downloadable data tables. The 2025 table has no Las Vegas row. Its interactive tool will return a local number, but that output has no stable, citable published source. Any site quoting you a “Genworth Las Vegas” hourly rate cannot document it, and neither can we — so we quote Nevada statewide and say so.

CareScout’s 2025 Nevada “home health aide” line

The 2025 Nevada data table retains a legacy home health aide column showing figures that are inconsistent with every other number in the same table and with CareScout’s own statement that it merged the homemaker and home health aide categories into “non-medical caregiver.” We treat it as a publishing artifact.

“Nevada requires 8 hours of initial caregiver training”

An undated Nevada state fact sheet says this. The regulation does not. NAC 449.3975 through 449.3982 sets a required curriculum and an 8-hour annual minimum, with no initial hour count. We publish what the regulation says.

“Nevada requires 24/7 supervision of caregivers”

Also from the same undated fact sheet. NAC 449.3982 requires documented supervisory visits or calls with no specified frequency. Presenting an agency’s own policy as a legal requirement misleads families about what the floor actually is.

The “$17 to $25 an hour” range on the Nevada state fact sheet

It is a primary state document, but it carries no publication or revision date and sits far below the 2025 statewide median. We will not date-launder a stale number.

A Place for Mom’s hourly figure as a Nevada number

Their published Nevada figure is identical to their published national figure, which suggests the state-level granularity is thin. Their number is also a different measure — starting rates reported by partner agencies, not provider-reported medians — so it does not belong in the same table.

What would change our mind

If CareScout publishes metro tables, we will use the metro figure. If Nevada updates the personal care agency fact sheet with a date and a current range, we will cite it. If a state agency publishes a Clark County rate survey, that becomes our headline number. Until then we publish what can be documented and say so.

If you believe a figure on this site is wrong, call (725) 465-8617 or email us. We correct within one business day and we note the correction.

Common questions