Nursing home care continued to be one of the fastest-growing categories of national health spending in September, representing only the second category after prescription drugs. Altarum’s monthly Health Sector Economics Brief reports that spending on nursing home care increased by 9.8% since September 2022 due to rising prices and utilization, as informed by Senior Researcher George Miller.

On the other hand, home care showed the slowest growth rate among major categories of national health spending, with a 5.5% increase in September. Despite growing at a fast rate among major categories, home healthcare prices did not contribute significantly to this growth due to a slight decline in utilization.

Year-over-year spending growth rates for other major healthcare categories are as follows: prescription drugs at 11.8%, dental care at 9.8%, physician and clinical services at 8.9%, and hospital care at 6.9%. National health spending overall has increased by 5.7% year over year, reaching a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $4.78 trillion, which accounts for 17.2% of GDP.

While GDP growth continues to outpace total health spending, personal healthcare spending has grown faster than GDP since February 2023 and grew by 7.4%, year over year, in September, according to the brief. Nursing homes added modest employment growth in October with an additional of 4,400 jobs, while home healthcare added slightly above the monthly average over the past year with an increase of 9,500 jobs as mentioned by Senior Researcher George Miller in his statement on the matter