By Indy Senior Advisor Care Team · August 5, 2026
Hancock County was Indiana's second-fastest-growing county in 2025, and most of that growth landed in McCordsville and Fortville. Nearly all of its senior living sits in Greenfield instead. Here is what that gap means for a family looking east.
The Growth and the Care Are in Different Towns
Hancock County was the second-fastest-growing county in Indiana in 2025, posting a 2.4 percent population gain and trailing only Boone County's 2.6 percent, according to analysis of Census Bureau estimates by the Indiana Business Research Center at IU's Kelley School of Business. That was the second year in a row it finished second, after finishing first in 2023. The Census Bureau puts the county at 90,969 people.
Look at where the houses are actually going up and the picture sharpens. Of the 1,268 single-family building permits filed across the county in 2025, McCordsville accounted for 518 and Fortville for 188. Greenfield, the county seat, had 258. Cumberland had 108, unincorporated Hancock County 156, and New Palestine 40. The county's northwest corner is where the growth is concentrated.
Now look at where senior care is. Of the six Hancock County communities we have verified against operators' own websites, four are in Greenfield: Springhurst Health Campus, Vita Senior Living of Greenfield, CrownPointe of Greenfield, and LILA Greenfield. One is in New Palestine, Woodland Terrace of New Palestine. One is in McCordsville, Majestic Care of McCordsville, and it is a skilled nursing and rehab facility rather than assisted living.
So the towns absorbing the most new households have the least residential care built into them. Fortville has no verified senior living community on our list at all. If your parents moved to a new build in McCordsville five years ago to be closer to grandchildren, and one of them now needs assisted living, the nearest verified options are a drive back down to Greenfield.
What Each of the Six Actually Does
The care types are not interchangeable, and the labels on the signs do not tell you much. Springhurst Health Campus is a Trilogy Health Services campus offering independent living patio homes, assisted living, memory care and skilled nursing on one property, with adult day services. It is the only Hancock County community on our list that covers that full span.
Vita Senior Living of Greenfield offers assisted living and memory care. CrownPointe of Greenfield offers residential care and independent living. Woodland Terrace of New Palestine, a New Perspective community, offers independent living, assisted living, memory care and patio homes.
LILA Greenfield is a 55-plus independent living community with no assisted living or nursing care on site. That distinction matters more than families expect. A 55-plus building is housing, not care. If your mother's needs increase there, the building does not increase with her. We wrote about this specific trap in our comparison of independent living versus 55-plus apartments.
Majestic Care of McCordsville is skilled nursing and rehab. That is the right answer after a hip fracture and the wrong answer for someone who needs help with bathing and medication reminders. Sending a parent to a nursing facility because it happens to be the closest building is a common and expensive mistake. Our nursing home versus assisted living page walks through where the line sits.
We do not publish bed counts, license numbers, pricing or star ratings for any of these six, because none of those operators publish them on their own sites. Anything you see quoted on an aggregator should be confirmed with the community directly and in writing.
Crossing the County Line Changes Less Than Families Assume
One reason families hesitate to look east is a belief that moving a parent out of Marion County means restarting with a different set of agencies. In central Indiana, that is mostly wrong, and the exceptions are worth knowing precisely.
The Area Agency on Aging does not change. CICOA Aging & In-Home Solutions covers Marion, Hamilton, Hendricks, Johnson, Boone and Hancock counties, plus Morgan and Shelby, as Indiana's Planning and Service Area 8. The same agency that assessed your father in Lawrence handles his case in Greenfield. The Aging and Disability Resource Center number is 317-803-6131, or 800-432-2422 toll-free.
The long-term care ombudsman does not change either. Indiana Legal Services runs the Region 8 ombudsman program at 317-631-9424, and Region 8 already covers all six of those counties plus Morgan and Shelby. The statewide line is 800-622-4484.
Adult Protective Services does not change, because Indiana's APS is not county-run. It operates through regional field teams under FSSA, and there is one statewide reporting line: 1-800-992-6978. There is no Hancock County APS number to hunt down, just as there is no Marion County one. And licensing does not change: the Indiana Department of Health licenses Residential Care Facilities statewide under 410 IAC 16.2-5, one license type for the whole state. A licensing complaint goes to IDOH at 1-800-246-8909, though IDOH itself notes that line is voicemail and recommends its online complaint form. We laid out which of those three to call in which situation earlier this summer.
What Does Change: the Hospital and a Local Nonprofit
Two things genuinely differ once you are in Hancock County, and both work in a family's favor.
The first is the hospital. Hancock Regional Hospital at 801 N. State St. in Greenfield, (317) 462-5544, was established in 1951 and runs 24/7 emergency care, home health, and a transitional care unit. Hancock Health is a member of the Mayo Clinic Care Network. A transitional care unit matters here: if a parent is admitted for a fall and is not ready to go straight home, the step-down conversation happens locally rather than requiring a transfer back into an Indianapolis system. Discharge planning at a community hospital moves differently than it does at the metro systems we covered in our hospital discharge guide, and it is usually easier to get a human on the phone.
The second is Hancock County Senior Services, a nonprofit at 1870 Fields Blvd. in Greenfield that has no real equivalent in most of the metro. It operates RIDE Hancock, a non-emergency transportation service running 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, reachable at (317) 462-1103, with wheelchair transport available. For in-home services, homemaker help, respite, handyman work and equipment loans, the number is (317) 462-3758.
It also offers free SHIP Medicare counseling by appointment, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. That is the same State Health Insurance Assistance Program counseling families pay insurance agents to approximate, and it is one of the more useful hours a caregiver can spend. The agency runs a Senior Social at its Greenfield office on the first and fourth Tuesdays of the month and every Thursday at the McCordsville Wellness Center, which is one of the few standing senior programs actually located in the fast-growing end of the county.
The practical point is that a Hancock County family gets a county-level nonprofit layer that a Marion County family generally does not. Transportation alone can postpone a move by a year when the real problem is that someone stopped driving.
Money Does Not Work Differently Out Here
Families often assume a community twenty-odd miles east of downtown is cheaper by definition. Nothing published supports that assumption, in either direction.
The 2025 CareScout Cost of Care Survey puts Indiana's median assisted living cost at $5,639 a month for a private one-bedroom, a semi-private nursing home room at $8,943 a month, a private nursing home room at $10,326, and non-medical home care at $35 an hour. Those are statewide medians. CareScout does not publish an Indianapolis-metro figure, let alone a Hancock County one. Anyone quoting you a local average is estimating and should say so.
There is also no published memory care median anywhere, for Indiana or any other state, because CareScout does not survey memory care as a category. If a Greenfield or New Palestine community's memory care price matters to your decision, the only way to know it is to get it in writing from that community.
The funding rules are statewide too. Indiana's PathWays Waiver, which replaced the Aged and Disabled Waiver for Hoosiers 60 and older on July 1, 2024, covers care services and does not cover room and board. Room-and-board help in a licensed Residential Care Facility runs through RCAP, the Residential Care Assistance Program, a separate Medicaid category. A community can hold a PathWays provider agreement, an RCAP agreement, both, or neither, and that is a per-building fact, not a per-county one. Ask each of the six by name. We explained the split in detail in our PathWays and RCAP walkthrough.
If your parents are still at home in McCordsville and the question is how long that can last, run the hours before you run the tours. At $35 an hour, forty hours a week works out to roughly $6,067 a month, already above Indiana's assisted living median. Our in-home care cost page shows how quickly that math turns.
The Drive Is Part of the Decision
Greenfield sits on I-70 east of Indianapolis; McCordsville and Fortville sit near the I-69 and State Road 67 corridor on the county's northwest side. Those are different commutes from different parts of the metro, and the difference shows up in how often people actually visit.
This is the least analytical and most reliable predictor we see. A community twelve minutes from the adult child who handles everything gets visited on a Tuesday after work. A community forty minutes away gets visited on Sundays, then every other Sunday. Visit frequency is a quality-of-care variable, not just a sentimental one, because the family member who shows up unannounced is the one who notices the bruise, the untouched tray, the new roommate conflict.
So the honest advice for a family in Fishers or on the far east side of Indianapolis is that Greenfield is a real option and Hancock County pricing and licensing hold no surprises. The honest advice for a family in Zionsville or Plainfield is that a Hancock County community will probably get visited less than one closer to home, and you should weigh that as a care factor rather than a convenience factor.
Also account for who else visits. If a spouse still drives and lives in New Palestine, proximity to their church and their doctor may matter more than proximity to the daughter in Carmel.
What to Do This Month
Start with CICOA. Call 317-803-6131 and ask for an options counseling appointment. Say the county out loud so nobody wastes time deciding whether you are in the service area. You are.
Call Hancock County Senior Services at (317) 462-3758 whether or not a move is imminent. Ask specifically about RIDE Hancock eligibility and about a SHIP Medicare counseling appointment. Both are free, both take a phone call, and neither requires a decision about moving.
Then tour with a list. Ask each community whether it holds a PathWays provider agreement, whether it holds an RCAP agreement, what happens when care needs increase past what the building is licensed to provide, and what the written notice requirements are if they later decide your parent is no longer appropriate for the community. Indiana law gives residents specific transfer and discharge protections, which we covered in a piece on discharge notices.
And check the license yourself rather than taking a brochure's word for it. Some Indiana buildings marketed as assisted living carry no state license at all, because a community that provides only room, board, housekeeping and activities without administering medication is not required to hold one under 410 IAC 16.2-5-0.5(c). That is legal. It is also something you want to know before your mother moves in. Our page on verifying a facility license shows where to look.
