Guide · Gates
California (skilled lane): SB 164 froze new Home Health Agency licenses from June 29, 2026, with exception requests as the only path — the non-medical Home Care Organization lane stays open. New York: new licensed home care services agencies face a public-need test with a rebuttable presumption of no need in any county already served by five or more agencies. Minnesota: a moratorium in the HCBS/home-care lane is reported running to December 31, 2027 — its exact license scope was secondary-sourced at our build, and our tracker flags it for verification against the health department rather than printing it as settled.
Certificate-of-need states (Rhode Island for home care providers; Mississippi and West Virginia on the home health side) do not say no — they say prove it, on a timeline of seasons. Need and CON gates reward founders who check before signing a lease and punish those who learn geography from a denial letter.
Our closed-doors tracker lists every gate in the dataset with its date and primary source, and the verdict checker applies gates to your service mix — a skilled-lane gate verdict comes back different from a non-medical one, on purpose.
Dataset pages behind this guide: California state page · New York state page · Minnesota state page · Rhode Island state page · the full 50-state dataset (checked October 22, 2026).
Guides are general; verdicts are specific. The license checker applies your state's rules to your service mix, and the cost calculator prices your opening from the same dataset this guide cites.
The free checkers give you the verdict and the number. The Kit gives you the working papers: your state's application packet walked through in filing order, the policies-and-procedures binder spec (what your binder must contain — never a boilerplate binder), the administrator self-audit, the insurance & bond spec sheet, the Medicaid gate map, the franchise-vs-independent 10-year worksheets, and the payroll-runway planner.
$49 one-time payment
Included in the $49 HomeCareLicenseCheck Kit
