ChatGPT's shortlist: home health and hospice agencies in the United States

There isn’t one nationally “best” home-health or hospice agency—the right choice depends heavily on where the patient lives, the specific services needed, Medicare/Medicaid or insurance coverage, and the agency’s local clinical team.

For a national comparison, I’d start with Medicare Care Compare, because CMS publishes agency-level quality and patient-experience data and updates much of it quarterly. For home health, CMS reports both quality-of-care measures and patient-experience measures; for hospice, it reports hospice quality measures and caregiver/patient experience information.

Major national providers worth considering

These are large organizations with substantial U.S. operations, but their performance can vary considerably by local branch:

• Amedisys — home health, hospice, and related post-acute services.
• Enhabit — home health and hospice.
• CenterWell Home Health — home health, with a large Medicare-focused footprint.
• AccentCare — home health, hospice, personal care, and related services.
• LHC Group — home health and hospice operations, now part of UnitedHealth Group.
• BrightSpring Health Services — home health, hospice, and other home/community-based services.
• VITAS Healthcare — a major hospice-focused organization.
• Gentiva — home health, hospice, and palliative care.

The important caveat is that a highly regarded national company isn't automatically the best agency for a particular patient. The local branch's CMS results, staffing, availability, and experience with the patient's condition can matter more than the corporate name.

What I would compare

For home health, look at:

• CMS Quality of Patient Care star rating
• Patient-experience/HHCAHPS results
• Timeliness of starting care
• Improvement in walking, transferring, bathing, and other functional measures
• Hospitalization/readmission measures
• Whether the agency can provide the required nursing, PT, OT, speech, or aide services

CMS specifically cautions that star ratings represent only some aspects of quality and should be considered alongside the underlying measures.

For hospice, I'd pay particular attention to:

• Hospice experience-of-care/CMS measures
• How quickly the hospice can respond to calls and urgent symptoms
• 24/7 clinical availability
• Nurse visit frequency and ability to increase visits when symptoms worsen
• Physician and medication availability
• Bereavement support
• Experience with the patient's diagnosis and symptom-management needs
• Whether the hospice provides care in the patient's preferred location

CMS's hospice quality program incorporates claims data, the HOPE assessment, and the Hospice CAHPS experience-of-care survey, with public reporting through Care Compare.

If you're choosing an agency for an actual patient, I can make this much more useful: give me the city/state (or ZIP code) and whether you're looking for home health, hospice, or both, and I can compare the agencies serving that area using current CMS data, services, reviews, and ownership information.

If you mean agencies that are good options for someone transitioning home after a hospitalization, I would not choose based simply on a national “best agency” list. Home health is highly local: the agency needs to serve the patient’s ZIP code, accept the patient’s insurance, have the right clinical capabilities, and be able to start care promptly.

For Medicare patients, the most useful national comparison is CMS’s Medicare Care Compare data. CMS reports both Quality of Patient Care and patient-experience measures, with data updated periodically.

National agencies worth investigating

These are large organizations with substantial home-health and/or hospice operations in multiple U.S. markets:

• Amedisys — home health and hospice; now part of BrightSpring Health Services.
• CenterWell Home Health — large home-health operation associated with Humana.
• Enhabit Home Health & Hospice — specializes in home health and hospice.
• AccentCare — large home health and hospice provider with operations across many states.
• LHC Group — home health and hospice organization operating through numerous local agencies; acquired by UnitedHealth Group/Optum.
• BAYADA Home Health Care — nonprofit home health and hospice provider with extensive regional coverage.
• VITAS Healthcare — primarily hospice and palliative care rather than conventional post-hospital home health.
• Gentiva — major home health, hospice and personal-care organization.

However, the local branch can matter more than the parent company. Two branches of the same national organization can have substantially different staffing, availability, patient experience and CMS performance.

What I would compare after a hospital discharge

For someone coming home after a hospital stay, I'd look particularly closely at:

1. Ability to start quickly. Ask, “What day can a nurse actually come to the home?”
2. Hospital-readmission performance. CMS publishes measures related to potentially preventable hospitalizations/readmissions.
3. Functional recovery. Look at measures involving walking, mobility and ability to perform activities—not just the overall star rating.
4. Patient experience. CMS's HHCAHPS survey measures communication, care, specific care issues and overall experience. The survey was revised beginning in April 2026, so make sure you're looking at current data.
5. Clinical capabilities. For example, ask whether they routinely manage IV medications, wound care, catheter care, ostomies, diabetes, heart failure, COPD, physical therapy, occupational therapy and medication reconciliation if those are relevant.
6. Communication with the hospital and primary-care doctor. A good transition requires the home-health team to receive the discharge summary, medication list and treatment orders.
7. Weekend/after-hours coverage. Ask who the patient calls at 9 p.m. when a problem arises.
8. Insurance/network status and copays. Being highly rated doesn't help if the agency isn't covered or can't provide the ordered services.

One particularly important point: don't automatically interpret a missing star rating as a poor result. CMS says smaller agencies may lack enough patient surveys to receive a patient-experience star rating; their underlying survey data can still be available.

If you're choosing for a specific patient

I can make this much more useful by comparing the actual agencies available to that patient, rather than giving you a generic national list.

If you give me the ZIP code (or city/state), insurance/Medicare status, and what the patient is recovering from (e.g., hip replacement, pneumonia, stroke, heart failure, surgery, wound), I can identify the nearby home-health agencies and compare their current CMS quality data, patient experience, services, and hospice capabilities where applicable.

Places ChatGPT showed

• New Chapter Home Health · 5.0★ · Home Care Service
• GL Home Health Care · 5.0★ · Home health care service
• Providence at Home with Compassus - Burbank Home Health · 5.0★ · Home health care service
• Bonum Home Health Services · 4.9★ · Home health care service
• Mela Home health · 5.0★ · Home health care service
• Alameda Home Care · 5.0★ · Home health care service
• Aili Home Health Agency, Inc. · 5.0★ · Home health care service
• Avida Home Health Care · Skilled Nursing
• Vanguard Home Health Care · 5.0★ · Home health care service

Yes. Many Medicare-certified home health agencies provide both skilled nursing (SN) and physical therapy (PT) in the patient’s home. Medicare specifically recognizes intermittent skilled nursing and physical therapy as covered home-health services when eligibility requirements are met.

Major agencies with broad U.S. coverage

• Amedisys — Provides in-home skilled nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy and other services. Its home-health locations are Medicare-certified.
• CenterWell Home Health — Provides skilled nursing plus PT, OT and speech therapy. Its home-health operation currently lists service availability across 37 states, including California, Texas, Florida, New York and others.
• Aveanna Healthcare — Operates Medicare home-health agencies in multiple states; CMS's 2026 list includes Aveanna Home Health locations.
• Enhabit Home Health & Hospice — A national home-health provider with skilled nursing and rehabilitation/therapy services.
• BAYADA Home Health Care — Provides skilled nursing and rehabilitation therapies through home-health locations in numerous states.
• AccentCare — Provides home health, including nursing and therapy, through locations across multiple states.

CMS defines a home health agency as an organization primarily providing skilled nursing and other therapeutic services, although the exact services and availability can vary by branch.

If you're looking specifically around Burbank/Los Angeles

The local search also found several agencies offering the combination you're looking for:

• New Chapter Home Health — Burbank; skilled nursing and PT.
• GL Home Health Care — Burbank; skilled nursing and rehabilitation therapies.
• Providence at Home with Compassus - Burbank Home Health — Burbank; skilled nursing and in-home therapy.
• Bonum Home Health Services — Burbank; skilled nursing, PT, OT and speech therapy.
• Mela Home health — Burbank; skilled nursing and PT/OT/speech therapy.
• Alameda Home Care — Burbank; skilled nursing and PT/OT/speech therapy.
• Aili Home Health Agency, Inc. — Burbank; skilled nursing and therapy services.
• Avida Home Health Care — Burbank; specifically lists skilled nursing and physical therapy.
• Vanguard Home Health Care — Burbank; home-based skilled nursing and therapy services.

Important: Availability of both SN and PT depends on the patient's location, insurance, clinical needs, physician's orders, and the agency's current staffing. For Medicare-covered home health, the patient generally must be homebound and require intermittent skilled services, with care ordered by a physician or other qualified provider.

If you tell me the state or ZIP code, I can narrow this to agencies that actually serve that area and compare Medicare certification, SN/PT availability, ratings, service area, and contact information.

There is an important distinction here: there is no reliable national CMS ranking of home-health or hospice agencies by how quickly they respond to a hospital discharge. CMS publishes quality, utilization, and patient-experience data, but not a standardized agency-level “hours from discharge/referral to first visit” ranking.

For Medicare home health, the federal standard is already fairly tight: the initial assessment generally must occur within 48 hours of referral or the patient's return home, unless the physician/practitioner specifies a different start-of-care date. That means an agency advertising same-day or next-day starts can be meaningfully faster than the regulatory ceiling.

Agencies publicly advertising very fast starts

These are examples, not a national ranking—their advertised response times are claims by the agencies, rather than independently audited national performance data.

• BrightStar Care — Some local branches advertise first visits within 24 hours of discharge and, in some circumstances, same-day starts. For example, its Frisco/Carrollton operation says clinically urgent referrals can often receive a first visit within 24 hours.
• BrightStar Care of West Fort Worth/Granbury — advertises care beginning within 24 hours of discharge, including weekend starts.
• Blissful Primary Home Care (Laredo, TX) — advertises same-day or next-morning starts and 24/7 intake, including weekend/after-hours discharges.
• Pathways Healthcare — its hospice operation advertises same-day hospice admission and a 24/7 live clinician; it operates hospice in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania.
• Lily Hospice (southeast Michigan) — advertises seven-day admissions, with a nurse evaluation generally within 24 hours and same-day admission when the required certification and family arrangements are ready.

What I'd use to identify the actually fastest agencies

Rather than relying on a national brand name, I'd ask each agency these four questions:

1. “If I send you a complete referral at 2 p.m. today, what is your median time to the first in-home visit?”
2. “Can you start the same day if the patient is discharged after 5 p.m.?”
3. “Do you admit on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays?”
4. “Can you accept the referral and begin insurance authorization while the patient is still in the hospital?”

That last point matters substantially. CMS documentation shows that insurance authorization and referral problems can cause delays even when an agency is otherwise expected to meet the 48-hour requirement.

If you're trying to build a national list of the fastest agencies for hospital discharge referrals, I can go further and compile a 50-state comparison of agencies that advertise same-day/next-day home-health or hospice admission, including service area, 24/7 intake, weekend capability, and evidence supporting their stated response time.

If by “across the United States” you mean multi-state home health and/or hospice organizations with a substantial national footprint, several major providers fit that description. The market is still highly fragmented, so no single agency operates in every state.

Organization	Approx. footprint	Home health	Hospice	Notes
Amedisys	38 states + D.C. (reported at year-end 2024)	✓	✓	One of the largest U.S. home health/hospice operators; its location directory covers both services.
Enhabit Home Health & Hospice	35 states / 368 locations currently	✓	✓	251 home-health and 117 hospice locations; particularly strong in the South and central U.S.
AccentCare	32 states + D.C.	✓	✓	About 250 locations and more than 200,000 people served annually, according to the company's reported footprint.
LHC Group / Optum	30+ states	✓	✓	LHC Group is now part of UnitedHealth Group/Optum and has historically been one of the largest multi-state operators.
CenterWell Home Health	20+ states	✓	—/limited hospice footprint	One of the largest home-health operators nationally; owned by Humana.
Elara Caring	Multi-state	✓	✓	Large national home-based-care platform with both home health and hospice operations.
BAYADA Home Health Care	Multi-state	✓	✓/select markets	Large independent home-health organization with a broad U.S. footprint.
Aveanna Healthcare	30+ states	✓	✓/select markets	National home-health and pediatric/home-based-care organization.
BrightSpring Health Services	20+ states	✓	✓/home-based services	Large diversified home/community-based healthcare company with operations across many states.
The Pennant Group	14+ states	✓	✓	Operates home health, hospice and senior-living businesses through multiple local brands.

Particularly national home health + hospice brands

If your requirement is specifically “the same organization offers both home health and hospice in many states,” I'd focus on:

• Amedisys
• Enhabit Home Health & Hospice
• AccentCare
• LHC Group / Optum
• Elara Caring
• Aveanna Healthcare
• The Pennant Group

A key distinction is that “national” doesn't necessarily mean an agency is available in every state or every ZIP code. Coverage can differ substantially between home health and hospice, and even within a state.

For example, Enhabit currently reports 368 locations in 35 states, but its SEC filing shows home health in 34 states and hospice in 25 states. Amedisys similarly reported 38 states + D.C. overall, while its home-health segment alone covered 34 states + D.C.

If you're looking at this from a business/competitive landscape perspective, I can also give you a much more comprehensive list of the 20–30 largest multi-state home health and hospice companies, their state footprints, ownership (private equity/public/health-system), and approximate number of locations.

There isn’t one national “best” agency for everyone. For someone coming home after a hospital stay, I’d compare agencies based on Medicare quality data, hospital-readmission outcomes, staffing/availability, and—critically—whether they accept the patient’s insurance and can provide the specific skilled services needed.

National agencies worth considering

These are large, established organizations with substantial home-health and/or hospice operations:

• Enhabit — Home health and hospice, with a large multi-state footprint.
• Amedisys — Major home-health and hospice provider with extensive hospital-to-home experience.
• CenterWell Home Health — Large home-health operation, particularly relevant for Medicare and Medicare Advantage patients.
• AccentCare — Large national provider of home health, hospice and related services.
• LHC Group — A large home-health/hospice organization operating as part of UnitedHealth Group/Optum.

But national size isn't the same thing as local quality. A smaller local agency can be an excellent choice, and the quality of individual branches can vary considerably.

What I'd look for after a hospital discharge

For home health, Medicare says covered services can include skilled nursing, wound care, medication management/education, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and medical social services.

I'd specifically ask each agency:

1. How quickly can a nurse see the patient after discharge?
2. Can you provide PT/OT in addition to nursing?
3. How do you handle medication reconciliation after a hospital stay?
4. What happens after hours if the patient deteriorates?
5. How quickly can you respond to a wound, fall, fever, shortness of breath, etc.?
6. How frequently will the nurse/therapists actually visit?
7. Do you have experience with the patient's particular condition—heart failure, COPD, stroke, joint replacement, wound care, diabetes, etc.?
8. Are you in-network with the patient's Medicare Advantage/commercial plan?

Importantly, Medicare says patients generally have the right to choose their home-health agency, although Medicare Advantage plans can limit the choices to contracted agencies.

For hospice

Hospice is different from ordinary post-hospital home health. Medicare hospice is intended for people with a terminal illness who meet the eligibility requirements and choose comfort-focused care rather than treatment intended to cure the terminal illness.

For hospice, I'd pay particular attention to:

• 24/7 phone availability
• Whether an actual clinician can make home visits urgently
• RN visit frequency
• Availability of hospice aides
• Physician/medical-director involvement
• Medication and equipment delivery
• Respite and inpatient hospice options
• Experience managing pain, agitation, breathlessness and other symptoms
• How well they communicate with family caregivers

Medicare provides a Care Compare tool specifically for comparing Medicare-certified home-health and hospice providers, including quality information.

If this is for someone being discharged now

I can make this much more useful by identifying the best-rated agencies that actually serve the patient's home, rather than giving you a generic national list.

If you give me the city or ZIP code where the patient will be living, plus whether you need (1) home health, (2) hospice, or (3) you're deciding between the two, I can compare the local agencies on Medicare quality data, services, ownership, reviews, and insurance considerations.

Yes. Medicare’s public Care Compare data identifies agencies with the highest possible star ratings, but there’s an important distinction between home health and hospice ratings.

Home health

CMS gives home-health agencies a Quality of Patient Care Star Rating from 1 to 5 stars, based on seven outcome/process measures using patient assessments and Medicare claims. The rating is updated quarterly.

As of the July 2026 CMS data release, examples of agencies publicly reporting a 5-star Medicare quality rating include:

• VNS Health Home Care — New York; CMS awarded it 5 stars in the latest rating cycle, up from 4.5.
• Rochester Regional Health Home Care — Rochester, NY.
• Eddy Visiting Nurse & Rehab Association — Troy, NY.
• Acacia Certified Home Care Co. — Utica, NY.
• Americare Certified Special Services — Brooklyn, NY.
• CenterWell Home Health has multiple 5-star locations in New York, including Liverpool, Hauppauge, Westbury and Ballston Lake.

There are considerably more nationally. One analysis of the July 2026 CMS data identifies 429 of roughly 12,250 Medicare-certified home-health agencies as 5-star agencies.

Hospice

Hospice has a separate CMS star-rating system. CMS's Provider Data Catalog specifically identifies `star_rating` as the hospice rating field.

Recent 2026 examples of 5-star Medicare hospice providers include:

• Transitions LifeCare — Raleigh/Triangle region, North Carolina.
• Lake Regional Hospice — Osage Beach, Missouri; reported as one of only 12 five-star hospices among 132 evaluated in Missouri.
• Hospice of Scotland County — North Carolina.
• ACG Hospice — multiple locations in Alabama, Kansas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
• Hospice of Northeast Georgia Medical Center — Georgia.
• Alive Hospice — Middle Tennessee.
• Angela Hospice — Michigan.
• Four Seasons — Western North Carolina.
• St. Francis Hospice — Titusville/Brevard County, Florida.

One important caveat

A 5-star Medicare rating isn't necessarily an overall "best agency" designation. For home health, CMS's quality star is based on specific clinical/process measures, while the separate patient-survey star rating measures patient experience. CMS recommends looking at the underlying measures as well as the stars.

For hospice, similarly, the rating should be considered alongside the agency's services, location, staffing/availability, complaints or deficiencies, and the specific type of care your family needs.

If you're looking for an agency for a particular patient, I can do something much more useful: compile the highest-rated Medicare home-health and hospice agencies within, say, 25–50 miles of your ZIP code, showing their Medicare stars, patient-experience stars, ownership, and services side-by-side.

Places ChatGPT showed

• Hospice of Odessa · 4.2★ · Hospice
• AAdi Home Health & Hospice · 3.4★ · Home health care service

Yes. There are a number of family-owned, locally owned, or independently operated home health and hospice organizations with strong patient/family-experience evidence. I would not equate “trusted” with a single star rating, though: for discharge planners, the most useful signals are Medicare quality data, CAHPS patient/caregiver experience, accreditation, responsiveness, referral coordination, and the agency's ownership/local leadership.

A few that stand out from current information:

• Home Hospice of Odessa/Midland / Home Hospice of West Texas — locally owned and operated, serving 18 West Texas counties with offices in Odessa, Midland, Big Spring and Andrews. It provides hospice and home-health services and is particularly community-rooted in the Permian Basin.
• AAdi Home Health & Hospice — explicitly family-owned and locally operated in the Coastal Bend. It is Medicare-certified and Joint Commission accredited and offers home health, hospice, palliative care, therapy and other services.
• ProHealth Home Health & Hospice — a family-owned organization dating to 1964, now serving Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Texas. It describes itself as family-owned and operated with more than 60 years of experience.
• ProHealth Home Care, California — locally owned, with six offices covering 20 California counties. It reports a 4.5-star Medicare Care Compare rating and substantial patient-review experience.
• Crest Home Health / Crest Palliative Care, Texas — rooted in a Texas family healthcare business dating to 1988. Its leadership describes the organization as carrying forward the founders' family legacy, with home health and hospice/palliative operations in Texas.
• Wings Over Texas Hospice — Texas-owned and locally operated, serving North and Central Texas. It reports a 5-star Medicare rating and a 2026 Hospice CAHPS Honors Elite recognition based on patient/caregiver experience.
• LifeCare Home Health & Hospice Family / Beyond Faith Homecare / Eternal Faith Hospice — an independently oriented Texas/Georgia group with several particularly strong recent patient-experience results. In September 2026, Beyond Faith's Wichita Falls location was recognized as an SHPBest Premier Performer (top 5%) for home-health patient experience, while Eternal Faith Hospice in Georgia received the same distinction for hospice caregiver experience.
• Independent Interim HealthCare franchise owners — this is a national network rather than one locally owned company. Individual franchises are independently owned, however, and some have received recognition for quality and growth. That makes the specific local franchise much more important than the national brand name when evaluating one.

What I would use to identify the most trusted agencies

For a national project—especially if you're looking at agencies from the perspective of families and hospital/SNF discharge planners—I'd build the list around five measurable criteria:

1. Family/caregiver experience: Hospice CAHPS and HHCAHPS results, particularly SHPBest or comparable recognition.
2. Medicare performance: Care Compare quality measures rather than Google reviews alone.
3. Local ownership/control: Family-owned, physician-owned, nonprofit community organization, or independently owned franchise.
4. Discharge-planner responsiveness: Same-day evaluations, weekend coverage, referral turnaround, reliable communication and ability to accept appropriate patients.
5. Breadth and continuity: Home health → palliative care → hospice where appropriate, plus strong relationships with hospitals, SNFs, physicians and community organizations.

Importantly, “locally owned” does not automatically mean higher quality, and a large organization isn't automatically less trusted. For example, recent SHPBest awards identify numerous individual locations of larger organizations as top-performing based on actual patient/caregiver survey results.

If you're looking for this for business development, referral partnerships, or competitive research, I can also build you a national shortlist of 25–50 family-owned/local home health & hospice agencies, organized by state, with ownership, locations, Medicare rating, CAHPS/SHPBest results, services, estimated size, and why discharge planners/families appear to trust them.