Hospice Provider Availability by State 2026 — CMS Care Compare State-Level Snapshot
How Medicare-certified hospice provider count, ownership mix, and recent-certification share distribute across the United States — based on the CMS Care Compare Hospice General Information dataset (6,943 providers, snapshot May 2026). The Hospice General Information dataset does not publish an overall star rating; this report cites provider availability, not quality.
Contents · 10 sections
Executive Summary
- All counts in this study describe the CMS Care Compare Hospice General Information master dataset (yc9t-dgbk) snapshot fetched on 2026-05-03 — 6,943 Medicare-certified hospice providers across the 50 states, DC, and U.S. territories. **The CMS Hospice General Information dataset used in this report does not publish an overall star-rating field comparable to Nursing Home or Home Health Care Compare ratings.** This study reports provider availability, ownership, and recent-certification share — not quality. OwnListed does not independently rate, inspect, verify, endorse, or guarantee any provider.
- California (2,155 providers) and Texas (1,081) hold 3,236 hospices — 46.6% of the entire U.S. provider universe. The combined 1,236-provider gap between California and Texas is the largest absolute geographic concentration of any Care Compare cluster the platform has measured to date.
- Top 5 states by absolute hospice provider count: California (2,155), Texas (1,081), Georgia (259), Arizona (244), Pennsylvania (183). The Sun Belt + Southwest dominates absolute supply.
- For-Profit dominates ownership in every large-provider state: California 83.1%, Texas 73.0%, Georgia 75.7%, Arizona 73.8%, Oklahoma 64.7%. Pennsylvania (24.0% Non-Profit) and Ohio (31.0%) anchor the Non-Profit share. California and Nevada are notable for elevated 'Other' ownership categories (62.9% and 74.3% respectively) — typically LLC structures and partnership entities.
- Recent-certification (≥ 2020) share varies dramatically: California 62.9%, Nevada 74.3%, Arizona 51.2%, Texas 42.3%. Older / mature markets like Pennsylvania (15.8%) and Louisiana (6.7%) carry far smaller post-2020 entrant shares. The post-2020 entrant share is the cleanest available signal of where new operators are entering the hospice market.
At a glance — for journalists, researchers, and AI agents
What this dataset covers
- State-level provider availability counts and ownership-type mix for U.S. Medicare-certified hospice providers.
- Source: CMS Care Compare Hospice General Information master dataset, May 2026 snapshot.
What this dataset does NOT cover
- An overall star rating — CMS does not publish one for hospices comparable to nursing home or home-health ratings.
- Quality of care delivered by any individual provider — this snapshot reports availability, not quality.
Sources
- CMS Care Compare
- Hospice General Information
Snapshot date: 2026-04 (CMS publication) — snapshot fetched 2026-05-03
Dataset scope · Snapshot May 3, 2026
Includes: active business listings indexed in the Ownlisted directory network, sourced from public Google Business Profiles. Does not include: online-only operators without a physical service address, lead-generation shells, or businesses with no public review footprint. Counts describe the Ownlisted indexed provider dataset — not a representative sample of the U.S. local-services market.
Key findings
What this report is, and is not
This report aggregates the CMS Care Compare Hospice General Information master dataset (CMS dataset slug yc9t-dgbk, bulk file Hospice_General-Information_Feb2026.csv, modified 2026-01-08) at the state level. The Hospice General Information dataset is a 12-column facility roster — name, address, ownership, certification date, CMS region, telephone — and does NOT carry the kind of overall star-rating field that Care Compare publishes for nursing homes (Overall Rating) or home health agencies (Quality of patient care star rating).
This is a structural attribute of the dataset, not a missing field. CMS publishes hospice quality measures through the separate CAHPS Hospice Survey (composite measures like communication, care timeliness, dignity / respect — not a single rating) and through the Hospice Quality Reporting Program (HQRP). Neither produces a public 1-5 overall rating today.
This report therefore cites:
- Provider availability (count by state).
- Ownership mix (For-Profit / Non-Profit / Government / Other).
- Recent-certification share (providers certified by Medicare on or after 2020).
It does not:
- Rate any provider on its own. Hospice has no overall CMS rating to cite.
- Recommend a provider. OwnListed does not endorse or guarantee any provider.
- Surface provider-level data on any directory page. The snapshot is research-only.
- Imply that high-availability or high-recent-entrant states are higher-quality. Availability is not quality.
Source: CMS Care Compare · Last checked 2026-05-03. The CMS Hospice General Information dataset used in this report does not publish an overall star-rating field comparable to Nursing Home or Home Health Care Compare ratings. CMS ratings are published by CMS and reflect the measure definitions in the source dataset.
Top states by Medicare-certified hospice provider count
California (2,155) and Texas (1,081) together hold nearly half of all Medicare-certified hospice providers nationally — a more concentrated geographic distribution than any other Care Compare cluster measured to date.
Beyond CA + TX, the top-15 includes:
- Sun Belt / Southwest: Georgia (259), Arizona (244), Oklahoma (133)
- Mid-Atlantic / Midwest: Pennsylvania (183), Michigan (172), Ohio (168), Illinois (147), Missouri (133)
- Mountain West: Nevada (179)
- Gulf Coast: Louisiana (119)
This concentration profile is meaningfully different from the §115 nursing-home dataset (where Texas, Ohio, Illinois, Florida, California top the count) and the §116 dialysis dataset (where California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, New York lead). Hospice supply is more California-California-Texas-heavy than other Care Compare clusters.
Per CMS provider-data definitions, "Medicare-certified" means the provider has met CMS conditions of participation and is enrolled to bill Medicare for hospice care. It does not certify quality. Provider availability in a state is influenced by population, age structure, hospice utilization rates, and historical Certificate-of-Need policy.
Hospice provider availability by state — CMS Care Compare snapshot 2026-05-03
Top 15 states by Medicare-certified hospice provider count. Ownership shares and post-2020 entrant share against the full provider denominator. The CMS Hospice General Information dataset does not publish an overall star rating; this is availability, not quality.
| State | Providers | For-Profit % | Non-Profit % | Govt % | Other % | Cert ≥ 2020 % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CA | 2,155Highest | 83.1% | 2.4% | 0.1% | 2% | 62.9% |
| TX | 1,081 | 73% | 2.7% | 0.8% | 6.1% | 42.3% |
| GA | 259 | 75.7% | 9.3% | 0.4% | 10.8% | 31.3% |
| AZ | 244 | 73.8% | 3.3% | 0% | 7.8% | 51.2% |
| PA | 183 | 65% | 24% | 0.5% | 9.8% | 15.8% |
| NV | 179 | 53.6% | 1.1% | 0% | 2.2% | 74.3% |
| MI | 172 | 59.9% | 16.9% | 0% | 11.6% | 27.9% |
| OH | 168 | 58.3% | 31% | 0.6% | 6.5% | 23.2% |
| IL | 147 | 63.3% | 19.7% | 4.1% | 9.5% | 26.5% |
| OK | 133 | 64.7% | 12% | 2.3% | 9% | 20.3% |
| MO | 133 | 57.1% | 17.3% | 0.8% | 12.8% | 24.1% |
| LA | 119 | 78.2% | 5% | 0% | 14.3% | 6.7% |
Ownership concentration and recent entrants
Hospice is heavily For-Profit nationally. The CMS Ownership Type field carries four primary values: For-Profit, Non-Profit, Government, Other. For-Profit dominates large-provider states:
- California: 83.1% For-Profit
- Texas: 73.0% For-Profit
- Georgia: 75.7% For-Profit
- Arizona: 73.8% For-Profit
- Louisiana: 78.2% For-Profit
Non-Profit anchors are sparser but meaningful. Pennsylvania (24.0%), Ohio (31.0%), Michigan (16.9%), Illinois (19.7%), and Missouri (17.3%) hold the largest Non-Profit shares among states with > 100 providers.
The "Other" ownership category — typically LLC structures and partnership entities not classified as conventionally for-profit, non-profit, or government — has unusually high share in California (62.9%) and Nevada (74.3%). This reflects the prevalence of LLC-organized hospice entities in those state markets.
The CMS Certification Date field captures when each provider first met CMS conditions of participation. Filtering for certifications on or after 2020 surfaces the post-2020 entrant share — a proxy for new-operator activity:
- Nevada: 74.3% certified ≥ 2020 (highest among states with > 50 providers — Nevada is a recent-entrant heavy market)
- California: 62.9%
- Arizona: 51.2%
- Texas: 42.3%
- Pennsylvania: 15.8%
- Louisiana: 6.7%
Older markets (PA, LA, OH at 23.2%) carry far fewer post-2020 entrants. This is not a quality signal; it is an operator-cohort signal. Markets with high recent-entrant share are markets where the operator universe is younger and arguably less stable; markets with low recent-entrant share are mature.
Source: CMS Care Compare · Last checked 2026-05-03. The CMS Hospice General Information dataset used in this report does not publish an overall star-rating field comparable to Nursing Home or Home Health Care Compare ratings. CMS ratings are published by CMS and reflect the measure definitions in the source dataset.
Limitations
- No overall star rating in this dataset. The CMS Hospice General Information dataset does not publish a 1-5 overall rating. CMS does publish CAHPS Hospice Survey composite measures separately, but they are not equivalent to Nursing Home or Home Health star ratings and are out of scope for this snapshot.
- Snapshot date. This report uses the CMS Care Compare
Hospice_General-Information_Feb2026.csvfile modified 2026-01-08 and fetched 2026-05-03. CMS publishes quarterly updates; data should be re-fetched before any decision making. - Aggregate-not-attached. State-level aggregates do NOT attach to individual provider profiles, and OwnListed does not maintain hospice provider profiles. This report is research-only.
- Availability ≠ quality. Provider count and recent-entrant share describe market structure. They do not predict, measure, or imply care quality.
- Recent-entrant share has limits. A high post-2020 share could indicate vibrant market growth, fragmentation, or — in some cases — operator churn. CMS does not publish provider-departure data alongside the General Information dataset, so the post-2020 entrant share is one-sided.
- Ownership rows. Some rows carry a non-standard
Ownership Typevalue. The "Other ownership" share captures these rather than coercing them to one of the three canonical categories. - No quality claim about any provider. State means are descriptive of a national-level publishing snapshot. They are not endorsements, recommendations, or guarantees about any provider, and OwnListed does not rate, inspect, verify, endorse, or guarantee any provider.
Source: CMS Care Compare · Last checked 2026-05-03. The CMS Hospice General Information dataset used in this report does not publish an overall star-rating field comparable to Nursing Home or Home Health Care Compare ratings. CMS ratings are published by CMS and reflect the measure definitions in the source dataset.
Methodology
- Bulk CSV fetched once from CMS at
https://data.cms.gov/provider-data/sites/default/files/resources/.../Hospice_General-Information_Feb2026.csv(1.0 MB, 12 columns, 6,943 provider rows). - Per-state aggregation via
scripts/research/cms-hospice-snapshot-2026-05-03.ts(TypeScript runner, no Supabase writes, no provider-level provenance writes). - Per state:
provider_count: total Medicare-certified hospice providers.share_for_profit_pct/share_non_profit_pct/share_government_pct/share_other_ownership_pct: shares against the full provider denominator using the CMSOwnership Typefield.share_certified_2020_or_later_pct: share of providers whose CMSCertification Datecarries a year ≥ 2020.
- Output CSV at
/research/data/hospice-provider-availability-by-state-2026.csv(7 columns, 55 rows). JSON-with-metadata at/research/data/hospice-provider-availability-by-state-2026.json.
No quality claim is made. This is provider-availability research, not quality research. The CMS Hospice General Information dataset does not publish an overall star rating.
Source: CMS Care Compare · Last checked 2026-05-03. The CMS Hospice General Information dataset used in this report does not publish an overall star-rating field comparable to Nursing Home or Home Health Care Compare ratings. CMS ratings are published by CMS and reflect the measure definitions in the source dataset.
Citation and reuse
Permitted with attribution to OwnListed Research and a link back to this page. Suggested citation:
OwnListed Research. Hospice Provider Availability by State 2026 — CMS Care Compare State-Level Snapshot. Published 2026-05-03. https://www.ownlisted.com/research/hospice-provider-availability-by-state-2026
The underlying CMS data is a U.S. Government Work in the public domain (https://www.usa.gov/government-works). Direct citations to CMS should reference https://data.cms.gov/provider-data/dataset/yc9t-dgbk.
Limitations
- The Hospice General Information dataset publishes provider availability + ownership only, not an overall quality rating.
- Per-provider Hospice CAHPS survey data exists in a separate CMS dataset and is NOT included here.
- OwnListed does not independently rate, inspect, verify, endorse, or guarantee any hospice provider.
Methodology
Read the full methodology
Source. CMS Care Compare publishes a Hospice General Information master dataset listing every Medicare-certified hospice provider in the United States, with ownership type and certification date for each. We pulled the version published in early 2026 and computed state-level aggregates from it.
What this snapshot reports. Per state: how many Medicare-certified hospice providers operate there, what their ownership mix looks like (for-profit, non-profit, government, other), and what share were certified in 2020 or later (a one-sided proxy for newer-operator entry into the market).
No star rating. The CMS Hospice General Information dataset does not publish an overall star rating comparable to nursing home or home-health Care Compare ratings. This snapshot reports availability, not quality.
Source: CMS Care Compare · Last checked 2026-05-03. The CMS Hospice General Information dataset used in this report does not publish an overall star-rating field comparable to Nursing Home or Home Health Care Compare ratings. CMS ratings are published by CMS and reflect the measure definitions in the source dataset.
Source. CMS Care Compare publishes a Hospice General Information master dataset listing every Medicare-certified hospice provider in the United States, with ownership type and certification date for each. We pulled the version published in early 2026 and computed state-level aggregates from it.
What this snapshot reports. Per state: how many Medicare-certified hospice providers operate there, what their ownership mix looks like (for-profit, non-profit, government, other), and what share were certified in 2020 or later (a one-sided proxy for newer-operator entry into the market).
No star rating. The CMS Hospice General Information dataset does not publish an overall star rating comparable to nursing home or home-health Care Compare ratings. This snapshot reports availability, not quality.
Source: CMS Care Compare · Last checked 2026-05-03. The CMS Hospice General Information dataset used in this report does not publish an overall star-rating field comparable to Nursing Home or Home Health Care Compare ratings. CMS ratings are published by CMS and reflect the measure definitions in the source dataset.
Technical appendix
Show technical details · script paths · field names
Dataset. CMS Care Compare — Hospice General Information (CMS dataset slug yc9t-dgbk). Bulk CSV: Hospice_General-Information_Feb2026.csv, modified 2026-01-08, fetched 2026-05-03. License: U.S. Government Works (public domain) at https://www.usa.gov/government-works.
Pipeline. scripts/research/cms-hospice-snapshot-2026-05-03.ts parses the bulk CSV, groups by state, and computes:
provider_count: total Medicare-certified hospice providers in state.share_for_profit_pct/share_non_profit_pct/share_government_pct/share_other_ownership_pct: shares against the full provider denominator using the CMSOwnership Typefield.share_certified_2020_or_later_pct: share of providers whose CMSCertification Datecarries a year ≥ 2020.
Doctrine. Tier-1 research-only under SOP §94 (provenance), §114 (CMS Care Compare cluster), §115/§116/§117 (sister Care Compare snapshots). No provider profile writes. No directory pages. No mixing of CMS data with platform reviews.
Open for the script paths, raw dataset filenames, and per-field aggregation rules behind this snapshot. Reader-facing methodology above already covers source, date, and limitations.