Methodology|Updated September 12, 2026
How we rate, and where every number comes from
Two kinds of numbers live on this site and they are never mixed. The tables and the survey pages are data, printed as it came out of a named file with a pull date. This page explains both.
the five criteria
What a family caregiver actually needs to know
Every agency on the ranking is looked at through the same five questions, weighted as below. The weights favour the things that decide whether a few hours a week of help will actually happen, and keep happening, over the size of the brand.
| Criterion | Weight | What we look for |
|---|---|---|
| Local ownership and accountability | 25% | Who answers when a caregiver does not show up. A named local owner or operator scores highest; franchise and pairing models are scored on the strength of the local office and on how clearly they say who employs, insures and supervises the caregiver. |
| The first conversation | 15% | Whether a real person answers, whether the family can choose how they are contacted, and whether a phone number is demanded before anyone will talk to you. |
| Plan flexibility | 25% | Whether support can start with a few hours a week of companionship, meals, errands and light housekeeping, whether a minimum is stated, and whether the plan is built with the family and changed when life changes. |
| Non-medical clarity | 15% | Whether the agency says plainly that its help at home is non-medical and keeps the line between companion, homemaker and personal care and anything clinical visible on its own website. |
| Family communication | 20% | How the family caregiver hears what happened on a visit, whether respite for the family caregiver is treated as a service in its own right, and whether the agency writes to the family as well as to the client. |
no scores
Why no agency carries a number
No agency on the ranking carries a numeric score from us. Each of the six carries a short qualitative label that we can defend from two sources only: the company's own public website, read on September 12, 2026, and its Google Maps listing in the file described below. We do not invent quotes, prices, response times or client stories about them, and we did not contact them for this page.
the agency file
Where the Google numbers come from
Google ratings move. A number on this site is the number on the pull date, not today's. The tables are re-pulled when the site is updated and the date changes with them. Two rows in the file carry no street address; they are marked (no address listed) rather than guessed.
the tables
How the three data pages are cut
- Most-reviewed home care agencies in St. Louis. Rows with 20 or more reviews, the two policy-excluded rows and the out-of-metro row removed, sorted by review count alone, top 20. FreedomCare stays in, labelled as a consumer-directed program, because a pure review-count table has no reason to exclude it.
- Rated 4.9 or higher with 20 or more reviews. Same exclusions, then both bars applied, sorted by rating and then by review count. 16 rows clear both bars.
- Most-reviewed in St. Charles County. Listings whose city is St. Charles, St. Peters, O'Fallon, Wentzville or Dardenne Prairie, with 10 or more reviews, sorted by review count. 9 rows. The threshold is lower than the metro table because the county has fewer listings, and the page says so.
A table is built only when the cut leaves at least six real rows. None of the three carries a score, a sponsor or an editorial order.
who supports this site
Who supports this site
This site is supported by New Plan Care, a St. Louis in-home care company.
The request form on the front page sends to newplancare.com and nowhere else. No agency paid to appear in the ranking, was asked to pay, or was contacted for this page. The six agencies are described neutrally from their own websites, and we do not accept payment to publish negative claims about a competitor.
corrections
If we got something wrong
If your agency is described inaccurately, if a Google number does not match the file, or if a website we quoted has changed, write to info@newplancare.com with the page and the line. We will check it against the file and the live site and correct the page, and the correction date will appear in the kicker at the top of the page.
the survey pages
Where the caregiving figures come from
The five survey pages on this desk carry no scores and no agencies. Every figure on them is a published CDC survey estimate, reproduced with the question it came from and the year it was collected. Here is how to pull it yourself.
the questions
Read the question number, not the headline
Three questions carry every figure on this site. They are not interchangeable, they were not asked of the same people, and two of them come from different years.
- Q36, class C07 Caregiving, survey year 2021. Percentage of older adults who provided care for a friend or family member within the past month. 48 states and territories reported it. Missouri 21.8 percent, rank 18. Illinois 16.4 percent. Used on the caregiver share page, ranked instead by the width of its confidence interval on the survey margins page, and cut to the twelve Midwest states on the Midwest page.
- Q39, class C07 Caregiving, survey year 2021. Average of 20 or more hours of care per week provided to a friend or family member. 48 states and territories reported it. Missouri 33.6 percent, rank 24. Illinois 39.9 percent. Used on the caregiving intensity page and, alongside Q36, on the Midwest page.
- Q46, class C01 Overall Health, survey year 2022. Percentage of older adults who report having a disability, a category the survey defines as including limitations related to sensory or mobility impairment. 54 states and territories reported it. Missouri 48.6 percent, rank 11. Illinois 40.4 percent. Used on the physical limits page.
the age cut
Hold the stratification steady
Every figure on this site uses the same slice: stratificationid1 = 65PLUS, which the
file labels "65 years or older", combined with stratificationid2 = OVERALL, meaning not
broken out by sex and not broken out by race. The dataset also carries a "50-64 years" band and an
"Overall" band that mixes the two. Neither is used here. If you pull the file and get a different
number, check that field first.
The data value type is always PRCTG, a percentage. Confidence limits shown on the
ranked pages are the low_confidence_limit and high_confidence_limit
columns exactly as published, at 95 percent. One page ranks those limits themselves: the width column on
the survey margins page is the high limit minus the
low limit, a subtraction of two published numbers and nothing else.
de-duplication
Prefer the single year row, and say so when there is not one
The 2021 caregiving rows arrive twice for most locations. One row is stamped yearend 2021, a single survey year, and one is stamped yearend 2022, a 2021 to 2022 pooled estimate. They are two different series and they are not always the same number: of the 40 jurisdictions that appear in both, 7 report a different value on each question, and the gap reaches 6.0 points (Ohio publishes 25.9 percent in the single year series and 19.9 percent in the pooled series). The rule applied here: prefer the single year row, and fall back to the pooled row only where a jurisdiction publishes no single year row at all. Forty of the 48 jurisdictions on the two caregiving pages come from the single year series. Eight come from the pooled series because that is the only estimate published for them: Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia and Washington. Those eight are marked on both ranked tables. Read the ranking as a snapshot of who reported what, not as a strict like for like comparison, because those eight rows rest on a wider survey window than the other forty. Without a de-duplication rule of some kind every state would appear twice in a ranking, which would be a fabricated list even though every number in it was real.
Rollup rows are also removed before ranking. The file contains a United States row and four census region rows (Midwest, Northeast, South, West) alongside the states and territories. Those are not jurisdictions and never take a rank. The United States row is shown at the bottom of each table, unranked and marked, purely for comparison.
missing years
Expect gaps, and expect them to be real
BRFSS modules are optional. Each state decides, year by year, whether to field a given module, so a state can report the caregiving questions in one year and not the next, and a question can cover 48 jurisdictions in one year and a different count in another. That is why no figure on this site is presented as "current" without a year attached, why the caregiving pages say 2021 and the physical limits page says 2022, and why we do not blend years to make a table look complete.
It also means a rank is a rank among the places that answered, not among all fifty states. Every ranked page states the count in its own methodology box.
what is not measured
Know what these numbers cannot tell you
These are self reported survey estimates of how many people in a place say a thing about themselves. They are not clinical assessments, not diagnoses, and not counts of anybody's need for help at home. A higher percentage in a state does not mean care is worse there, better there, cheaper there or easier to find there. This site makes no claim of that kind, and the survey figures play no part in the agency ranking on the front page.
The checklist pages carry no survey data at all. Everything on the room by room page is cited to a named public guidance page from the National Institute on Aging or the CDC, with a live link, and everything on the rides, meals and errands page comes from the agencies' own published service areas. The same rule holds for the two later checklist pages: the week after a hospital stay is cited line by line to Medicare and NIA documents, and what to ask before you hire anyone is cited to the Missouri statute and the state agency pages it quotes. Neither carries a ranking, because no dataset supports one.