America's Home Health and Hospice Need: Why Population and Politics May Limit Elder Care

By david.lippman · June 6, 2026

An aging U.S. population is driving an increase in demand for home health and hospice care, but employment is not keeping up. This story looks at…

Great choice — hospice and home health care data tells powerful stories about aging demographics, service gaps, and care access.

Before I can run analysis, what location or region are you focusing on? (Country, state, metro area, or specific counties?)

Once you share that, I can dive into your datasets and pull meaningful insights right away — whether that's provider density, utilization patterns, demographic alignment, or market gaps.

Running analysis on national hospice and home health care data...

I'm pulling provider density metrics (agencies per 100K population by state), utilization patterns (admission rates, average length of stay, service types), demographic alignment (age 65+, chronic disease prevalence), and market gaps (underserved rural areas, coverage disparities).

To deliver this analysis, I need your datasets uploaded. Do you have:

- Provider/agency-level data (locations, service types, capacity)?

- Patient/utilization data (admissions, diagnoses, outcomes)?

- Demographic/population data (age, geography)?

Once you share those files, Datastam will run the full analysis immediately. What format are they in, and which one should I start with?

A data table has been generated showing the ranked order of categories by their EMPTY values. You can explore the table to see how each category compares based on its associated EMPTY field content.

The analysis compared EMPTY (labeled as 'Unnamed: 1') values across different Medicare Hospice Utilization categories. Two data tables were generated showing the breakdown of these values across the 7 rows in the dataset. Each Medicare Hospice Utilization category maps to a corresponding description or label in the adjacent column, giving you a side-by-side view of how these values relate to each category.

The dataset contains 7 categories in the Medicare Hospice Utilization index. These represent different report table identifiers (such as MDCR HOSPICE 1 through 7), each describing a different aspect of Medicare Hospice data. The tables generated provide a breakdown of these categories and their descriptions.

The Medicare Hospice Utilization data has been analyzed and summarized across its reported categories. Three data tables were generated providing a breakdown of the dataset's structure and category distribution.

Based on the analysis of the 7 Medicare Hospice Utilization categories, no significant outliers were detected. All categories fall within a similar range relative to the average, meaning none stand out as unusually different from the rest. Two data tables were generated summarizing the categories and their characteristics.

The analysis successfully produced a bar chart and a data table breaking down the ' EMPTY' column by row type. The visualization shows the distribution between header/label rows and actual table description rows in the dataset. The bar chart clearly illustrates the count of each row type, giving you a quick visual overview of how the catalog is structured.

A comparative summary table was generated analyzing the 'Medicare Hospice Utilization' column. The table presents key statistics including total entries, non-null count, unique values, most frequently occurring value, and average character length of string values. The results are displayed in a structured table format for easy comparison.

The analysis produced four comparison tables showing the side-by-side rankings of Medicare Hospice Utilization identifier lengths versus their corresponding description ( EMPTY column) text lengths. The tables display each row's ID length, ID rank, description preview, description length, description rank, rank difference, and inversion status, allowing you to visually compare how the two rankings align or diverge.

The anomaly scan was run across both columns in your dataset. Two data tables were generated summarizing the results. The scan covered 7 rows total, checking for null/empty values, unusual description lengths in the ' EMPTY' column, and naming pattern mismatches in the 'Medicare Hospice Utilization' column. The tables display the flagged rows and their anomaly details for your review.

The analysis successfully produced a summary table mapping Medicare Hospice 2023 table identifiers to their full descriptions from the metadata file. A data table (artifact 1) was generated showing the available table entries. The keyword categorization examined how often terms like 'Utilization', 'Payments', 'Demographic', 'Entitlement', and 'Type' appear across the table descriptions, helping classify the nature of each table in the dataset.

The employment data reveals dramatic growth in the U.S. home health care sector. Using data from FRED All Employees, Home Health Care Services.csv, the workforce expanded from 138,400 employees in 1985 to nearly 1.87 million in 2026 — a 1,250% increase over 41 years. Two charts were generated: one showing the long-term employment trend and another combining the nursing/home health aides workforce trend with a wage distribution breakdown. According to BLS Occupational Employment and Wages Home Health and Personal Care Aides May 2023.xlsx, there are currently 4.3 million home health and personal care aides in the U.S., earning a mean hourly wage of $17.36 and a median annual salary of just $35,800. Hourly wages range from $13.00 (10th percentile) to $21.65 (90th percentile), placing this among the lowest-paid healthcare occupations.

The global health data.csv file contains 30 years of US aging population data spanning 1990 to 2019. The share of Americans aged 65 and older grew from 12.6% in 1990 to 16.2% in 2019 — a rise of 3.6 percentage points. Over the same period, life expectancy increased from 75.2 to 78.9 years. A visualization was generated showing the 65+ population share alongside life expectancy trends over time, and detailed breakdowns by age sub-group (65–69, 70–74, 75–79, and 80+) are also available in the data.

Great news — the data reveals three distinct and actionable market gaps in US hospice and home health care, drawn from the medicare-hospice-use-and-spending-by-state-aggregate-report-cy2016.csv and CMS Hospice State Feb2026.csv files. Three charts were generated to visualize each gap clearly.