Trust & methodology
How we verify what's on this site
KinCare Finder is a small, new directory. We're upfront about what that means: we don't have the resources of a national clinical registry, so instead of pretending otherwise, we label exactly where each piece of information came from.
Verified business
We confirmed this is a real, operating business: a working phone number, a real address, and a business registration that matches the name on the listing. This is a baseline identity check, not a clinical or regulatory review.
License checked
For home health and hospice agencies, this means the agency appears under its CMS Certification Number (CCN) in CMS Care Compare's Provider Data Catalog, the federal government's public list of Medicare-certified providers. The date next to the label is when CMS last updated that dataset. For non-medical home care agencies, it means we matched the agency's license number in the Illinois Department of Public Health's Home Services Agency directory. Licenses can lapse or change afterward, so the date matters.
Provider-reported
This information came from the provider itself, usually its own official website, and we haven't matched it to a public license record yet. It's often accurate, since most providers describe themselves honestly, but treat it as a starting point for your own questions, not a confirmed fact.
Where the listings come from
- Home health agencies
- Based on public data from Medicare's Care Compare, including agency contact details, services, star ratings, and the areas each agency serves.
- Hospice agencies
- Based on public data from Medicare's Care Compare, including agency contact details and the areas each agency serves.
- Non-medical home care
- Researched from agency websites and cross-checked against Illinois state licensing records. Medicare doesn't cover this kind of care, so there's no federal dataset for it.
What we don't check yet
- • We don't have a live connection to CMS or state license registries. Home health and hospice listings are imported from CMS's Provider Data Catalog and refreshed periodically, and non-medical agencies are checked by hand, so every listing reflects a point in time.
- • The Medicare-certified badge comes from CMS Care Compare data, not from anything the provider told us. It isn't a live regulatory feed, so confirm current status on Medicare.gov's Care Compare before you decide.
- • We don't audit clinical quality outcomes, staffing ratios, or survey deficiency histories. If that matters for your decision, ask the provider directly and check your state's public health department records.
A verification label is a starting point for your own questions, not a substitute for them.
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