The best and worst states for long-term care

If your parent or grandparent will be moving into an assisted living community in the near future, you should consider looking outside your hometown to get them the best care and attention they need. According to a new report from AARP, there are big differences between states on the level of care they provide to seniors.

The report, called the AARP Long-Term Care Scorecard, ranked all 50 states based on the affordability of services, the quality of the care, the level of support it provides to families, and the level of choice provided to the seniors themselves.

The best states for long-term care, according to the report, were Minnesota, Washington State, Oregon, Hawaii, and Wisconsin.

“Our intention is that this scorecard will begin a dialogue among key stakeholders so that lagging states can learn from top performers and all states can target improvements where they are most needed,” according to the study’s authors, as reported on WebMD.com.

The worst-performing states were Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Indiana.

The report said that even in states where long-term care was cheaper than other states, cost was still an issue. “We looked at affordability, and it's just not affordable,” said the AARP’s Susan Reinhard, one of the study’s authors.