When a family member is diagnosed with dementia, you need to know what Florida memory care offers, what it costs, and where the legal framework stands the day you decide. This guide answers those questions for Alzheimer's, vascular, frontotemporal, and Lewy body disease alike. It pulls together the Florida Alzheimer's Disease Initiative, the Florida Memory Disorder Clinic network (described in detail below), the brand-new Memory Care Services specialty license created by CS/CS/SB 1404 in 2026, the federal CMS GUIDE Model, Medicare Part B coverage of the new anti-amyloid drugs, hospice eligibility for advanced dementia, and the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly. It is written for the person who wants the rules, the dollar figures, and the phone numbers, not platitudes.

What Memory Care Means in Florida, and What Just Changed

For most of the last twenty years, memory care in Florida was a marketing phrase, not a license. A standard assisted living facility could open a locked corridor, hire a few staff with extra training, post brochures advertising memory care or dementia care, and operate under the same Chapter 429 Part I framework as a building serving cognitively intact residents. The only statutory hook was §429.918 F.S., which required four hours of initial dementia training and four hours of continuing dementia training annually for direct-care staff in facilities advertising specialized Alzheimer's services, plus a written disclosure to families. Beyond that, oversight depended on which add-on specialty license a facility happened to hold (Extended Congregate Care, Limited Nursing Services, or Limited Mental Health) and on the goodwill of the operator.

That changed on March 17, 2026. The Florida Senate passed CS/CS/SB 1404 by a vote of 37 to 0 and the House by 111 to 0, and the bill was ordered enrolled. It creates a new fourth specialty license type for assisted living facilities, Memory Care Services, and ties the right to use the words memory care, dementia care, or Alzheimer's care in advertising and marketing to holding that license. The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration has approximately fifteen months to issue rules; we expect those to take effect in the second half of 2027. Once they do, existing assisted living facilities providing memory-care services have a six-month grace period to obtain the license. After that, an unlicensed building cannot legally hold itself out as a memory-care provider in Florida.

The new license will require, among other things: written admission and retention criteria, dementia-specific staff training beyond the §429.918 baseline, twenty-four-hour awake staffing in memory-care units regardless of facility size, individualized care planning, physical-plant standards, and contract and disclosure language designed to tell families exactly what they are buying. The most consequential piece, the one that will reshape staffing budgets at every memory-care building in Florida, is the awake-overnight requirement. Today, a small Florida assisted living facility (sixteen beds or fewer) is permitted under Rule 59A-36.010 to staff overnight with one on-call awake-or-asleep staff member. After SB 1404's rules take effect, a memory-care unit at any size, five beds, fifteen, fifty, two hundred, must have awake staff present.

This guide covers the framework that exists today, but it flags throughout the points where SB 1404 is going to change the rules. If you are placing a family member in 2026, you are placing them under the old framework. If you are placing in late 2027 or after, you are placing under the new one.

The Six Care Settings That Serve Dementia in Florida

There is no single memory-care path through Florida's eldercare system. Depending on stage, family resources, geography, and Medicaid status, a person living with dementia will move through some combination of six distinct care settings. Understanding which is which, and which Medicaid does or does not pay for, is the foundation of every other decision.

1. Home with intermittent caregiver support. The default for early-stage dementia (Functional Assessment Staging Tool stages 3 to 5). A spouse or adult child provides primary care; paid help, companion, home health aide, or licensed nurse, comes in for blocks of hours. Florida's Statewide Medicaid Managed Care Long-Term Care program funds this for waiver enrollees through participant-directed or agency-directed personal care, adult day care, respite, and consumable supplies. Private-pay home health aides cost roughly $30 per hour in Florida in 2026 (per CareScout/Genworth industry-survey data), with most families budgeting four to eight hours per day in mid-stage dementia.

2. Home plus adult day care. Adult day centers operating under a Specialized Alzheimer's Services designation under §429.918 F.S. and Rule 59A-16 F.A.C. provide structured daytime care, meals, programming, supervision, transportation in many markets, at a 1:5 staff-to-participant ratio with mandatory dementia training. Private pay runs roughly $75 to $100 per day in Florida 2026; the SMMC LTC waiver covers it at no cost-share for Medicaid-eligible enrollees. The Florida Department of Elder Affairs also runs Project R.E.L.I.E.F. (Respite for Elders Living in Everyday Families), a volunteer companion program providing free in-home respite to dementia caregivers.

3. Standard assisted living facility, no specialty license. Appropriate for residents in early-to-moderate dementia who are still ambulatory, generally continent, and do not require nursing services. Average Florida costs in 2026 sit around $4,500 per month statewide (per industry-survey data).

4. Memory-care unit (today: secured corridor in an ALF; 2027+: licensed Memory Care Services facility or unit). The setting most families picture when they say memory care: a secured environment, dementia-trained staff, structured programming, and (typically) an inclusive monthly rate. Florida memory-care costs in 2025-2026 (per CareScout/Genworth and A Place for Mom industry-survey data) run a state median of approximately $5,833 per month, with metro variation from roughly $4,699 in Tallahassee through $5,100 in Orlando, $5,151 in Jacksonville, $6,172 median in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach corridor, and $6,300 to $6,850 in the Tampa Bay market. These figures are typically twenty-five to forty percent higher than the same building's standard ALF rate, reflecting the cost of staffing, secure-egress construction, and dementia-specific programming.

5. Skilled nursing facility (often with a dedicated dementia unit). Appropriate for advanced dementia (FAST 6E through 7B and beyond), or for any dementia stage paired with significant medical complexity, feeding tube management, IV antibiotic courses, complex wound care, frequent behavioral crises requiring physician oversight. Florida nursing-home semi-private rates run approximately $310 per day, or roughly $9,400 per month, with private rooms at $360 to $400 per day. Medicaid pays through the Institutional Care Program (an entitlement under the State Plan, no waitlist) for residents who meet financial and functional criteria, administered by AHCA.

6. Hospice, at home, in an ALF, in a memory-care unit, or in an SNF. Hospice is a Medicare-paid service, not a place. Once a person living with dementia meets the eligibility criteria below, the Medicare hospice benefit pays for an interdisciplinary team that comes to wherever the person is living.

These six settings overlap and chain together. The path is not a ladder; it is a series of decisions, each of which depends on stage, available informal caregiving, and money.

The Florida Alzheimer's Disease Initiative

ADI funds three streams. Respite care, in-home, facility-based, and adult-day-care respite, gives the family caregiver a few hours, a day, or in some cases a multi-day break. Supportive services, case management, caregiver counseling, support-group facilitation, and consumable supplies like incontinence products and nutritional supplements, fill the gaps between formal medical care and what the household can do on its own. Memory Disorder Clinics, the third stream, operate the diagnostic and clinical-research backbone of the program: seventeen MDCs designated under §430.502 F.S. spread across Florida's metropolitan and academic centers.

The constraint is the waitlist. ADI services for individual families are means-prioritized, DOEA uses the standardized Comprehensive Assessment and Review for Long-Term Care Services (CARES-administered) priority instrument to rank applicants, and resources are allocated downward from the highest-priority cases. As of mid-2025, the statewide ADI waitlist for respite and supportive services stood at approximately 17,081 individuals. That number waxes and wanes with appropriations cycles; the FY 2025-26 budget added respite funding that the legislature had cut in prior years, and the Alzheimer's Association's Florida chapters have been organized in Tallahassee around restoring full pre-pandemic respite levels.

How to apply. The single phone number is the Elder Helpline, 1-800-963-5337. The eleven Area Agencies on Aging serving Florida route the call to the regional intake team, which schedules a screening, eligibility is straightforward (Florida resident, age 18+, yes, ADI is not strictly an age-65 program, with a documented diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease or a related dementia), and the priority assessment determines where in the queue the family lands.

The Memory Disorder Clinic Network

The seventeen Florida Memory Disorder Clinics, designated under §430.502 F.S., are clustered with the state's academic medical centers and large hospital systems. They provide reduced-cost diagnostic workup (often well below private memory-clinic rates), longitudinal monitoring, family support, and access to clinical trials.

Region MDC Anchor Institution
Northwest (Panhandle) West Florida Hospital MDC Pensacola
North Central Florida State University College of Medicine MDC Tallahassee
North Central University of Florida Health (McKnight Brain Institute) Gainesville
Northeast Mayo Clinic Jacksonville Jacksonville
Central AdventHealth Orlando MDC Orlando
Central Orlando Health MDC Orlando
Central Health First MDC Brevard
Central Halifax Health MDC Volusia
Tampa Bay USF Byrd Alzheimer's Center & Research Institute Tampa
Tampa Bay Tampa General Hospital MDC Tampa
Tampa Bay Morton Plant Mease MDC Pinellas
Southwest Sarasota Memorial MDC Sarasota
Southwest Lee Health MDC Lee County
Southeast Mt. Sinai Wien Center for Alzheimer's Disease & Memory Disorders Miami Beach
Southeast University of Miami / Miller School of Medicine Miami
Southeast Memorial Healthcare System MDC Broward
Southeast Cleveland Clinic Florida MDC Weston

The 1Florida Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (1Florida ADRC), an NIH/National Institute on Aging-funded P30 program, sits on top of the MDC network, anchored by the University of Florida and the Mt. Sinai Wien Center, with USF Health Byrd Alzheimer's Center serving as the clinical core site. The 1Florida ADRC operates the state's brain bank under separate NIH funding and serves as the entry point for many of the clinical trials enrolling Florida families.

If your loved one has been told it is likely dementia by a primary-care physician, the MDC nearest you is the right next stop for a structured workup, neuropsychological testing, MRI, blood-based biomarkers, and, where indicated, amyloid PET or cerebrospinal fluid testing. Diagnosis quality matters enormously downstream because Medicare's coverage of the new anti-amyloid therapies, hospice eligibility, and even some assisted living admissions all turn on the documented diagnosis and stage.

The CMS GUIDE Model: Florida's 34 Programs

The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services launched the Guiding an Improved Dementia Experience (GUIDE) Model on July 1, 2024, an eight-year alternative-payment-model demonstration running through June 30, 2032. The model is designed for community-dwelling Medicare beneficiaries with confirmed dementia and pays participating practices a per-beneficiary monthly capitation in exchange for delivering a defined dementia-care service package: a dedicated 24/7 care navigator, a comprehensive care plan with caregiver training, caregiver education and support, and, critically, up to $2,500 per beneficiary per year in respite care, paid through the GUIDE practice for in-home, adult day, or facility-based respite.

Florida has thirty-four GUIDE participants in the 2026 cohort. Eleven are Established Programs, organizations with prior dementia-care infrastructure that began billing GUIDE on July 1, 2024, and twenty-three are New Programs that completed a one-year pre-implementation period and began billing on July 1, 2025. The Florida participant list spans health systems (Mayo Clinic Jacksonville, AdventHealth, BayCare, Memorial Healthcare System), independent physician practices, and a new generation of dementia-care startups (including Remo Health and Memory Lane Care Services) that built their entire business model around the GUIDE payment.

Eligibility is narrower than most families realize. A beneficiary must be enrolled in Medicare Parts A and B fee-for-service, not Medicare Advantage. They must have a confirmed dementia diagnosis. They cannot be on hospice. They cannot be a long-stay nursing-home resident. The GUIDE practice must be enrolled and accepting new patients. There are no copays or deductibles for GUIDE services themselves, and the $2,500 respite benefit does not count against any other respite allotment.

If your family member is on traditional Medicare, has a dementia diagnosis, lives at home, and has not yet entered hospice, calling the closest Florida GUIDE practice to ask about enrollment is the highest-leverage thirty-minute phone call you can make this week. The CMS Innovation Center maintains a public participants list searchable by ZIP code.

Medicare Coverage of the New Anti-Amyloid Therapies

Two FDA-approved monoclonal antibodies treat early symptomatic Alzheimer's disease (mild cognitive impairment due to AD or mild AD dementia) by clearing amyloid-beta plaques from the brain. Lecanemab-irmb (Leqembi), manufactured by Eisai and Biogen, received full FDA approval on July 6, 2023; it is administered by IV infusion every two weeks, with a wholesale acquisition cost of approximately $26,500 per year. Donanemab-azbt (Kisunla), manufactured by Eli Lilly, received full FDA approval on July 2, 2024; it is administered monthly by IV infusion, with a planned 12-to-18-month course and a wholesale acquisition cost of approximately $32,000 per year.

Medicare Part B covers both under National Coverage Determination 200.3, last revised on July 6, 2023. Coverage requires:

  • Confirmed amyloid-positive PET scan or CSF biomarker testing
  • Diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment due to AD or mild AD dementia (NOT moderate or severe)
  • The prescribing clinician's enrollment in a participating registry that captures real-world outcomes
  • APOE-ε4 genotyping, with patient counseling on the elevated risk of amyloid-related imaging abnormalities (ARIA-E and ARIA-H), APOE-ε4 homozygotes carry significantly higher risk
  • Baseline brain MRI, plus serial MRI surveillance throughout treatment

The cost-sharing math is unfriendly. Both drugs are Part B drugs (administered in a clinic), not Part D drugs (filled at a pharmacy). The Inflation Reduction Act's $2,000 annual Part D out-of-pocket cap does not apply. Standard Medicare cost-sharing is 20% of the Part B-allowed amount after the deductible, meaning a beneficiary without supplemental coverage faces roughly $5,300 per year out of pocket on Leqembi or $6,400 per year on Kisunla, before counting the cost of the diagnostic PET, the serial MRIs, or the infusion-suite charges. Medigap, Medicaid, or Medicare Advantage out-of-pocket caps shift that math significantly; a Medicaid-Medicare dual eligible typically pays nothing.

The Staging Question: FAST, GDS, CDR

Almost every consequential decision in dementia care turns on a stage. ALF admission, memory-care placement, hospice eligibility, GUIDE enrollment, and Medicare coverage of the anti-amyloid drugs all reference one of three structured staging tools.

Functional Assessment Staging Tool (FAST), developed by Reisberg in 1988, is the workhorse for hospice eligibility and ALF admission decisions. Stages 1 and 2 describe normal aging. Stage 3 corresponds to mild cognitive impairment. Stage 4 is mild Alzheimer's, the person can no longer reliably handle finances, complex meal planning, or unfamiliar travel. Stage 5 is moderate AD: the person needs help selecting weather-appropriate clothing. Stages 6A through 6E are moderately severe, progressive loss of dressing, bathing, toileting, and continence in that order. Stages 7A through 7F are severe: speech reduced to fewer than six intelligible words, then to a single word, then loss of ambulation, then loss of the ability to sit up unassisted, then loss of the ability to smile, then loss of the ability to hold up the head.

Global Deterioration Scale (GDS), also Reisberg, is a seven-stage scale that runs roughly parallel to FAST and is more often cited in clinical and research literature.

Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR), developed by Hughes and refined by Morris, scores six domains, memory, orientation, judgment and problem-solving, community affairs, home and hobbies, personal care, to produce a global score of 0 (normal), 0.5 (questionable or very mild), 1 (mild), 2 (moderate), or 3 (severe). CDR 0.5 maps roughly to mild cognitive impairment; CDR 1 to mild dementia; CDR 2 to moderate; CDR 3 to severe.

A typical care-setting transition map (illustrative, not prescriptive):

  • FAST/GDS 3-4 → home with intermittent support
  • FAST/GDS 5 → home plus adult day program, or a Standard ALF
  • FAST/GDS 6A-D → memory-care unit (or ALF with the new Memory Care Services license, once SB 1404 rules take effect), or home with 24-hour caregiving
  • FAST/GDS 6E-7B → secured memory-care unit or skilled-nursing dementia unit
  • FAST/GDS 7C+ → hospice eligibility threshold under LCD L34567
  • GDS 7 / CDR 3 → SNF plus hospice, or hospice in the current setting

When Hospice Becomes the Right Answer

Medicare hospice eligibility for dementia is governed primarily by Local Coverage Determination L34567, Hospice Determining Terminal Status, issued by the Medicare Administrative Contractors that pay claims for Florida hospice providers. The dementia-specific eligibility criteria require both of the following:

  1. Functional Assessment Staging Tool stage 7C or higher. That means: loss of ambulation, plus inability to bathe, dress, toilet, or feed self, AND speech limited to a single intelligible word or fewer over the course of an average day.

  2. At least one secondary medical complication within the prior twelve months. Acceptable secondary complications include: aspiration pneumonia; pyelonephritis or other upper-tract urinary tract infection; septicemia; multiple stage-3 or stage-4 decubitus ulcers; recurrent fever after a course of antibiotics; or significant nutritional decline (≥10% weight loss in six months OR serum albumin below 2.5 g/dL).

The two-physician certification requirement at 42 CFR 418.22 still applies, the hospice medical director plus the attending physician must each certify that the patient has a prognosis of six months or less if the disease runs its expected course. Recertification follows the standard pattern of a 90-day initial benefit period, a second 90-day benefit period, then unlimited 60-day benefit periods. The Medicare Hospice Benefit covers four levels of care under 42 CFR 418.302: Routine Home Care (most common), Continuous Home Care (crisis-level home care, at least eight hours within a 24-hour period, primarily nursing), General Inpatient Care (acute symptom management at a hospice facility, contracted hospital, or contracted SNF), and Inpatient Respite Care (up to five consecutive days at a Medicare-certified facility, primarily for caregiver relief).

Florida's hospice provider landscape. VITAS Healthcare, the largest hospice operator in the United States, headquartered in Miami, covers most of the state's metropolitan markets. Empath Health in 2026 completed its merger with Trustbridge (the parent of Hospice of Palm Beach County and Hospice by the Sea), creating a continuous Tampa Bay-through-Palm Beach corridor under one parent. Cornerstone Hospice & Palliative Care affiliated with Chapters Health System in 2025, expanding the Tampa Bay-headquartered Chapters footprint into Central Florida. Other major regional providers include Tidewell (Sarasota/Manatee/Charlotte), Big Bend Hospice (Tallahassee/Panhandle), Halifax Health Hospice (Volusia/Flagler), Catholic Hospice (Miami-Dade/Broward), Avow Hospice (Collier), and Hope Hospice (Lee/Collier/Charlotte/Hendry/Glades, co-located with Hope PACE). All Florida-licensed hospices operate under Chapter 400 Part IV F.S. and Rule 59A-37 F.A.C.

Cost. The Medicare Hospice Benefit covers 100 percent of hospice services with no beneficiary cost-sharing, with two narrow exceptions: a 5 percent coinsurance on outpatient prescription drugs (capped at $5 per prescription), and a 5 percent coinsurance on the daily rate of inpatient respite care.

PACE: The Most Underused Florida Option

The Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly is the most dementia-dense Medicare program structure in the country, approximately 69 percent of national PACE participants have a dementia diagnosis (per NPA 2023 Census data). PACE is jointly financed by Medicare (Part C capitation) and Medicaid (Florida SMMC LTC capitation, with a separate Florida-specific PACE plan structure), and it is the only U.S. care model that bundles everything, primary care, specialty care, hospital services, prescription drugs, adult day care, transportation, in-home care, durable medical equipment, behavioral health, and nursing-home placement when needed, under a single capitated arrangement.

Florida operates four PACE organizations as of May 2026:

  • Florida PACE Centers, Inc., a Miami Jewish Health affiliate, the oldest PACE site in Florida, serving Miami-Dade and parts of Broward
  • Suncoast PACE, operated by Empath Health, serving Pinellas County
  • Hope PACE, affiliated with Hope Healthcare, serving Lee, Collier, Charlotte, Hendry, and Glades counties
  • Trinity Health PACE Florida, serving portions of Pasco, Hernando, and Hillsborough counties

Eligibility. Federal floor at 42 CFR 460.150 plus Florida state plan: age 55 or older, certified by Florida CARES as needing nursing-home level of care, lives in a PACE service area, can live safely in the community at the time of enrollment. Once enrolled, a PACE participant pays no Medicare or Medicaid cost-sharing if Medicaid-eligible. Private-pay PACE is permitted but extraordinarily expensive, roughly $5,000 to $12,000 per month, because the participant is paying the full Medicare and Medicaid capitation out of pocket.

For a dementia-affected family who lives in one of the four PACE service areas, qualifies for nursing-home level of care, and is Medicaid-eligible (or close to it), PACE is often the single best answer. The model trades the freedom to pick any specialist in the country for an integrated care team that knows the participant, manages every aspect of the care, and absorbs the cost of services that would otherwise create a payer-coordination nightmare.

The Alzheimer's Association: Three Florida Chapters

The Alzheimer's Association maintains three Florida chapters covering the entire state:

  • Central and North Florida Chapter, headquartered in Orlando, serving 47 counties from Tallahassee through Daytona, Orlando, and Gainesville to the Treasure Coast
  • Florida Gulf Coast Chapter, headquartered in Tampa, serving 17 counties along the Gulf from Hernando through Naples plus inland Polk
  • Southeast Florida Chapter, headquartered in West Palm Beach, serving Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade

The chapters provide free local support groups (in-person and virtual), evidence-based education programs (10 Warning Signs, Healthy Living for Your Brain and Body, Effective Communication Strategies, Dementia Conversations, the multi-session Living With Alzheimer's series), a Community Resource Finder online directory of Florida providers, free 1:1 phone Care Consultation sessions with social-work staff, Memory Cafés, the annual Walk to End Alzheimer's events (Florida hosts approximately 25 Walks per year), and the Trial Match clinical-trial matching service. Beyond direct family services, the chapters carry the legislative water in Tallahassee, they were central to the passage of CS/CS/SB 1404 (2026) and the FY 2025-26 ADI funding restoration.

The Cost Picture, Plain

Florida 2025-2026 monthly cost ranges (private pay, before Medicaid offsets; cost figures per CareScout/Genworth and A Place for Mom industry surveys):

Setting Cost (approx.) Medicaid pays?
Home health aide (private pay) ~$30/hr → $3,600/mo for 4 hr/day SMMC LTC waiver covers personal care for enrollees
Adult day care (specialized dementia) $75-$100/day SMMC LTC waiver covers it
Standard ALF ~$4,500/mo statewide SMMC LTC pays services not room-and-board; OSS supplements room
Memory-care unit (FL median) ~$5,833/mo Same as ALF, services only
Memory-care, Tampa Bay $6,300-$6,850/mo Same
Memory-care, Miami metro ~$6,172/mo median Same
Memory-care, Orlando ~$5,100/mo Same
Memory-care, Jacksonville ~$5,151/mo Same
Memory-care, Tallahassee/rural N.FL ~$4,200-$4,900/mo Same
Nursing home semi-private ~$310/day → ~$9,400/mo ICP, entitlement, no waitlist
Nursing home private ~$360-$400/day ICP pays; difference for private room is OOP
Hospice (Medicare Hospice Benefit) $0 to family N/A, Medicare pays

Sources of payment for memory care, in rough order of frequency:

  1. Private pay, roughly 70 percent of Florida memory-care residents. Family savings, home equity (often a Lady Bird Deed plus reverse mortgage), or pension/Social Security.
  2. Long-term care insurance, increasingly rare for new placements (the policies sold widely in the 1990s and 2000s are aging out), but still meaningful for residents in their late 70s and 80s.
  3. SMMC LTC Assisted Living Services payment, only for Medicaid-eligible enrollees on the LTC waiver (which has a waitlist of roughly 48,000 to 59,000 applicants), only at participating facilities, and only on the room-rate-plus-Optional State Supplementation construct rather than on the bundled private-pay rate.
  4. VA Aid and Attendance, up to $2,874/month in 2026 for a veteran with one dependent and $2,424/month for an unmarried veteran with no dependents (effective Dec 1, 2025 through Nov 30, 2026 rates). Combat-era service requirement, asset and income tests apply. Surviving-spouse Aid and Attendance under the VA Survivors Pension is a separate benefit category with its own rate table; contact a VA-accredited claims agent or county veterans service officer for the surviving-spouse rate that applies to your situation.
  5. Medicare, does NOT pay for memory-care room and board at any stage. Medicare pays for short-stay (up to 100 days) skilled nursing facility care after a qualifying inpatient hospital stay, hospice, and the components covered under Parts A, B, and D, but never the rent on a memory-care unit.

Florida's Dementia Research Network

For families weighing whether to pursue clinical-trial enrollment as part of the care plan, six institutions form Florida's dementia research backbone:

  • 1Florida Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (1Florida ADRC), NIH/NIA P30 grant; lead institutions UF and Mt. Sinai Wien Center; affiliate clinical core USF Byrd Alzheimer's Center; operates the state brain bank
  • Mayo Clinic Jacksonville, Department of Neurology; investigator-initiated and industry-sponsored AD/FTD trials; major site for tau-PET imaging research
  • USF Health Byrd Alzheimer's Center & Research Institute (Tampa), state-funded research institute under §1004.445 F.S.; clinical-trials core within the 1Florida ADRC
  • University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Memory Disorders Clinic; behavioral neurology fellowship
  • Cleveland Clinic Florida (Weston), Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health affiliate; clinical trials
  • AdventHealth Research Institute (Orlando), diverse industry-sponsored trials

Active 2025-2026 trial categories include anti-amyloid agents (lecanemab and donanemab post-marketing extensions, plus next-generation candidates from Eisai and Lilly); anti-tau therapeutics; GLP-1 receptor agonists for AD (semaglutide trials); blood-based biomarker validation (p-tau217, GFAP); lifestyle intervention trials (US POINTER, the U.S. follow-on to the Finnish FINGER protocol); and primary-prevention trials in cognitively normal high-risk APOE-ε4 homozygotes. ClinicalTrials.gov is the authoritative trial registry; Alzheimer's Association TrialMatch and the 1Florida ADRC website are the consumer-facing entry points.

Frequently Asked Questions

The closest Memory Disorder Clinic for a structured workup, or a primary-care follow-up that orders one. A precise diagnosis (Alzheimer's vs. vascular vs. Lewy body vs. frontotemporal) and a baseline stage drive every subsequent decision. Medicare coverage of Leqembi and Kisunla, GUIDE enrollment, ADI priority scoring, and ALF admission readiness all reference the diagnosis and stage.

No. Medicare does not pay for assisted living, memory-care unit room and board, or the residential portion of any private-pay long-term care setting at any dementia stage. Medicare pays for: physician visits and diagnostics (Part B); short-stay skilled nursing after a qualifying hospital stay (Part A, up to 100 days, with cost-sharing after day 20); hospice (the Medicare Hospice Benefit); and the GUIDE Model services for enrolled beneficiaries. Family savings, long-term care insurance, the SMMC LTC waiver, OSS, VA Aid and Attendance, and home equity are the residential-side payment sources.

The clinical answer is: when the person meets LCD L34567 criteria, FAST 7C or higher plus a secondary medical complication in the past 12 months, and the goals of care have shifted toward comfort. The practical answer most Florida families arrive at: when ER visits and hospital admissions have started accelerating, when feeding has become a daily struggle, when pressure ulcers or recurrent infections appear, when the family is exhausted. A hospice information visit costs nothing and is not a commitment. Most major Florida hospices will send an intake nurse to the home, ALF, or SNF to evaluate eligibility and explain the benefit.

First, run the actual SMMC LTC eligibility math with a Florida elder-law attorney. The 2026 income limit is $2,982/month and the asset limit is $2,000 for an individual, with a $162,660 community spouse resource allowance and a 60-month lookback for transfers. There are legitimate planning structures (Qualified Income Trusts, spousal refusal, the personal services contract, the ladybird deed for the homestead) that can preserve the home and accelerate eligibility. Second, get on the SMMC LTC waitlist now even if you don't think you qualify yet. Third, apply for VA Aid and Attendance if your loved one is a wartime-era veteran. Fourth, ask the closest GUIDE Model practice about enrollment for the $2,500/year respite benefit and integrated care coordination.

Today, in May 2026, no separate memory-care license exists yet. Every Florida ALF marketing memory care is doing so under §429.918's training and disclosure framework, plus whatever specialty add-on (ECC, LNS, LMH) the building holds. Check the building's specific license profile on the AHCA FloridaHealthFinder.gov directory. After SB 1404 rules take effect (expected late 2027), the AHCA Bureau of Health Facility Regulation directory will display whether the building holds the new Memory Care Services specialty license; an ALF without the license will be prohibited from marketing using memory-care terminology.

A Word on Acting Now

The most important phone number in this guide is the Alzheimer's Association 24/7 Helpline, 1-800-272-3900. Whether you are weeks into a diagnosis or watching a years-long progression accelerate, the master's-level clinicians on the other end of that line have heard your situation before. They will help you find your nearest Memory Disorder Clinic, your closest GUIDE practice, your local PACE program, and the support group that meets in your county. The call is free, confidential, and available every hour of every day.

The framework around Florida dementia care is the most intricate piece of the state's eldercare system, three agencies (AHCA, DOEA, DCF) with overlapping authority, two payer streams (Medicare and Medicaid) with different eligibility rules, six potential care settings, four hospice levels, and a major statutory rewrite (SB 1404) on the way. None of it is impossible to navigate, but it is hard to navigate alone. The Memory Disorder Clinic, the Alzheimer's Association chapter, the Area Agency on Aging Elder Helpline, and a Florida elder-law attorney together cover almost every question a family will face in the first year after diagnosis. Make those calls early. Stage matters; placement matters; payment matters, but informed families end up in a better setting at a better cost with a better quality of life than uninformed families do, every time.

Learn More

Find personalized help navigating Florida memory care and dementia programs at brevy.com.


The information on Brevy.com is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional legal, financial, or medical advice. Rules vary by state and program and change frequently. Always verify with the relevant agency or a qualified professional. Brevy is not a law firm, financial advisor, or healthcare provider.

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Brevy Care Team

Expert eldercare guidance from Brevy's team of healthcare professionals and researchers.