If you're touring memory care in Indiana, state law gets you a document that pries a facility's dementia care open before you ever sign anything. Indiana addresses memory care through a law called the Alzheimer's and dementia special-care disclosure statute, which requires a place that both secures or runs a special dementia unit or program and markets dementia care to put its philosophy, its staffing, and its fees in writing and make it available to anyone who asks. This guide walks through that form, what memory care costs, and how to use the form to vet a place.

In This Guide

What Memory Care in Indiana Is

When you start calling places, "memory care" gets used as though it's one standard thing you can shop for and compare on equal footing. Indiana's rules don't treat it that way. What speaks to memory care here is a disclosure law and a staff dementia-training rule, and the law's duties fall on the health facility or housing with services establishment that provides or offers the dementia care. So what you're actually looking at is dementia care delivered inside one of those settings, and the way Indiana regulates them shapes what that looks like.

Indiana doesn't issue a license called "assisted living" at all. Under state law, a Housing with Services Establishment is a place that houses at least five residents and offers, for a fee, at least one regularly scheduled health-related service or at least two regularly scheduled supportive services. Separately, the Indiana Department of Health runs a Residential Care Facility licensing program, whose staff conduct health and life-safety code surveys and investigate complaints. Depending on what kind of place it is, the building your parent moves into may fall under one of these regimes. Neither one, on its own, tells you how a place handles dementia care.

That's the gap the disclosure law fills. Indiana Code 12-10-5.5, the Alzheimer's and dementia special-care disclosure statute, says that a facility that locks, secures, or segregates a unit or runs a special program for residents with Alzheimer's or dementia, and that also markets itself as providing Alzheimer's or dementia care, has to prepare a written disclosure form, submit it to the state every December, and make it available to anyone seeking information. What you get is a document the facility itself is legally required to produce. That document is the most useful thing you can ask for walking in the door.

How you'll pay is worth settling early. Indiana Medicaid pays for assisted living as a home- and community-based waiver service for people who meet a nursing facility level of care; for people 65 and older, that's the PathWays for Aging Waiver. None of the waivers that cover assisted living lists room and board, so ask what you'd still owe.

Your Tool: the Alzheimer's and Dementia Special Care Disclosure Form

A facility in Indiana can't sell itself on dementia care and keep the details to itself. If it secures a dementia unit or runs a special dementia program and also advertises dementia care, the disclosure statute requires it to commit the details of that care to a written form, file the form with the state each December, and make it available to anyone who asks. No inspector's report to decode. One document, written by the facility, that you have a legal right to see.

The form isn't a marketing brochure. The statute lists ten things it has to cover, and each is a question you'd otherwise have to pry an answer out of a salesperson to get. Beyond the items in the table below, the form also has to describe the unit and its design features, its activities, the staff's positions and initial training, and anything else the facility believes sets its dementia care apart.

The form must describe Why it matters to your family
The facility's dementia-care philosophy This is the heart of it. It tells you how the place actually thinks about dementia, instead of letting you take "specialized care" on faith
Its criteria for placement, transfer, and discharge Tells you who the unit is set up to serve and, just as important, when it can decide a resident's needs have outgrown it and move them out
Its assessment and care-planning process Shows how the facility decides what your parent needs and how it updates that plan as dementia progresses
Staff-to-resident ratios for each shift The single hardest number to get straight otherwise. It tells you how many caregivers are on the floor at 3 p.m. and at 3 a.m., not just on paper
Family-support programs Dementia care is hard on the family too. The form lets you see what support, education, or communication the place actually offers
Guidelines for physical and chemical restraints Tells you when and how the facility uses restraints or sedating medications, a question that's easy to skip until it's urgent
An itemization of charges and fees Puts the cost in writing line by line, so an advertised base rate can't hide what dementia care adds

The staffing line is worth pausing on. Staff-to-resident ratios for each shift means the facility has to disclose coverage overnight, not just during the busy daytime hours when you're most likely to tour. A unit can look well staffed at 2 p.m. and thin out badly by midnight, and this is where the form makes you ask.

Training is the other thing Indiana regulates. Indiana Department of Health guidance describes its rule as requiring six hours of dementia-specific training within six months of starting work, or within thirty days for staff assigned to the dementia special-care unit, and three hours every year after that. The form has to state the unit's training and continuing-education requirements, so check that what it says lines up with the people you meet on the floor.

What Memory Care in Indiana Costs

Cost is usually what families brace for, and there's no clean single number for memory care in Indiana. The CareScout survey used below reports assisted living, nursing homes, in-home care and adult day care, but not memory care as a category of its own.

What you do have is a solid anchor for the base. The CareScout 2025 Cost of Care Survey (released March 2026) puts the Indiana median for assisted living at about $5,639 a month ($67,665 a year), 35th highest among the states and below the national median of about $6,200 a month ($74,400 a year). Expect memory care to cost more than that: a resident pays for the room or apartment and may pay extra for special dementia care, which can include specialized staff training and secured exits. How much more varies by facility, and because CareScout collects rates by metro area, costs vary within Indiana. Treat memory care as a premium on top of the assisted-living base rather than a fixed figure, and be wary of any source quoting one precise statewide number for it.

This is where the disclosure form earns its keep on money. Because the statute requires an itemization of charges and fees, you're not stuck comparing headline rates. For context on the higher levels of care, the 2025 survey puts Indiana at about $8,942 a month for a semi-private nursing-home room and about $10,326 a month for a private room, below the national medians of $114,975 and $129,575 a year. Those are industry-survey figures, not government numbers, so use them to set expectations, then get a specific written quote from any place you're serious about. Ask what the base includes, how the facility charges as care needs grow, how it reassesses care as dementia progresses, and how often rates rise. Two places with the same headline price can land far apart once the dementia-care line items are in.

If your parent qualifies for Indiana Medicaid and meets a nursing facility level of care, a home- and community-based waiver such as PathWays for Aging (65 and older) can pay for assisted living. None of the waivers that cover assisted living lists room and board, so ask what you'd still pay.

How to Use the Disclosure Form to Vet a Place

You don't have to become an expert in dementia care to make a good decision. You have to get the disclosure form in your hands and make it do its job.

1
Step 1

Ask for the disclosure form before anything else

A facility that secures a dementia unit or runs a special dementia program, and markets dementia care, has to make this form available to anyone who asks. If a place advertising "memory care" can't or won't produce one, ask whether it actually has a secured unit or special dementia program and files a form with the state at all.

2
Step 2

Read the philosophy and care-planning sections first

This is where the form lays out how the facility thinks about dementia and how it builds and updates a care plan. Compare it against what the salesperson told you, so you can see whether the substance matches the pitch.

3
Step 3

Pin down the staffing ratios for every shift

The form has to state staff-to-resident ratios for each shift, so read the overnight numbers, not just the daytime one. Then ask who covers the unit at night and how many of them are trained in dementia care.

4
Step 4

Check the discharge criteria and the restraint guidelines

The form has to describe when a resident can be transferred or discharged and how the facility uses physical and chemical restraints. Discharge terms matter more in dementia care, where needs change and a facility may decide it can no longer meet them. Read these before you're in a crisis, not during one.

5
Step 5

Match the fees to the care, and check the training

Read the itemized charges against the care-philosophy section so you can see what the premium buys, and compare the form's staff-training section with Indiana's rule: six hours of dementia-specific training for unit staff within thirty days, then three hours a year. Then tour once around a mealtime, when staffing and the mood of a place are hardest to stage.

Tour at least a couple of places. The goal isn't a perfect one. It's a unit whose philosophy, staffing, and fees you understand going in, because the form put them on paper.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does Indiana regulate memory care?

Through a disclosure law and a staff dementia-training rule. Memory care is delivered inside housing with services establishments or health facilities, and the disclosure law's duties fall on whichever of them provides or offers the dementia care. A housing with services establishment houses at least five residents and offers at least one regularly scheduled health-related service or two supportive services, and the Indiana Department of Health separately licenses residential care facilities. The disclosure law, Indiana Code 12-10-5.5, requires a written disclosure form, and the training rule is covered in the last question below.

What is the Alzheimer's and dementia special care disclosure form?

It's a document Indiana law requires of a facility that locks, secures or segregates a dementia unit or runs a special dementia program, and also markets Alzheimer's or dementia care. The facility has to prepare it, file it with the state every December, and make it available to anyone who asks. The statute lists ten things the form must cover, among them the facility's dementia-care philosophy, its placement/transfer/discharge criteria, its assessment and care-planning process, its staff-to-resident ratios for each shift, its family-support programs, its restraint guidelines, and an itemized list of charges and fees. That makes it your single best tool for comparing places and holding one to what it promised.

How much does memory care cost in Indiana?

CareScout doesn't report memory care as its own category. Use the assisted-living base as your anchor (about $5,639 a month, or $67,665 a year, in the CareScout 2025 survey, below the national median of about $6,200 a month and 35th highest among the states). Because CareScout collects rates by metro area, costs vary within Indiana. Expect memory care to run higher, since a resident may pay extra for special dementia care on top of the room. Use the disclosure form's itemized fees and get a written quote from any place you're considering.

Does Medicaid pay for memory care in Indiana?

Indiana Medicaid pays for assisted living through its home- and community-based waivers for people who meet a nursing facility level of care: the PathWays for Aging Waiver for people 65 and older (and 60 to 64 with disabilities), the Health & Wellness Waiver for younger people with disabilities, and the Traumatic Brain Injury Waiver. None of those three lists room and board, so ask what you'd still owe. Confirm eligibility before counting on it.

Does Indiana require dementia training for memory-care staff?

Indiana Department of Health guidance describes a dementia-training rule: six hours of dementia-specific training within six months of starting work, or within thirty days for staff assigned to a dementia special-care unit, then three hours every year. Ask any place you tour how its unit staff meet that rule, and compare the answer with the training section of its disclosure form.

Learn More

Care TypesMemory Care by StateMemory care is specialized assisted living for dementia. What it costs, who pays (Medicare doesn't), and how the rules change by state, with a guide to yours. Care TypesAssisted Living in IndianaAssisted living in Indiana runs about $5,639 a month, 35th highest among the states. What it costs, who regulates it, and how families pay for it. Care TypesNursing Homes in IndianaNursing homes in Indiana in 2026: what a skilled nursing facility costs, how to check a facility's quality, and how Medicaid pays for long-term care. Care TypesHome Care vs. Home Health in IndianaHome care vs. home health in Indiana: home health is skilled care Medicare covers, home care is non-medical help it won't, and the IDOH license draws the line. Care TypesAssisted Living vs. Memory Care in IndianaAssisted living vs. memory care in Indiana: safety drives the choice. Assisted living runs about $5,639 a month; ask memory care units for itemized fees. Care TypesMemory Care vs. Nursing Home in IndianaMemory care vs. a nursing home in Indiana turns on skilled-nursing need and who pays. Compare Indiana costs, what Medicaid covers in each, and how to decide. CaregiverCaregiver Burnout: Signs and SupportHow to recognize caregiver burnout, why it happens, and what actually helps, from respite care to evidence-based programs like REACH II and Powerful Tools. MedicaidMedicaid Planning StrategiesSee which assets you keep, how the 5-year look-back works, and the legal moves that qualify you for Medicaid long-term care without losing the house.

Find personalized help comparing memory care in Indiana 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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