Illinois Nursing Home Costs in 2026: Average Monthly Price

How much does an Illinois nursing home cost per month?

The 2025 survey median is $8,304 a month for a semi-private room in Illinois, which is $273 a day and $99,645 a year. A private room runs $9,216 a month, $303 a day, $110,595 a year. Those are survey medians for the state as a whole, and the spread inside Illinois is real: a facility in Cook County and a facility in a rural downstate county are not working from the same cost base, and the survey does not publish city figures.

The pattern here is worth pausing on. Illinois is cheaper than the national median for nursing home care but slightly more expensive than the national median for home care and assisted living. The same survey puts a semi-private room at $5,627 a month in Texas and $15,528 in New York, so the state line matters more than any other single variable in the price. Our state-by-state nursing home cost table has the full list.

One caution about the median: it is not a quote. It is the midpoint of what facilities reported, and it is the base rate for the room. Therapy, pharmacy, laundry, transport, a private room differential and a level-of-care add-on all sit on top of it. Our guide to nursing home costs beyond the room rate lists what to ask about before you sign.

Semi-private or private room: what is the price gap?

In Illinois the gap is $912 a month, about $10,950 a year, or $30 a day. That is noticeably narrower than the national gap of $1,217 a month. A private room is not a covered benefit by default: Illinois Medicaid pays for one when a doctor documents that it is medically necessary, and otherwise the family pays the difference out of pocket.

In practice the semi-private decision is often made by the building rather than the family. Facilities hold a mix of semi-private and private beds, and a person entering from a hospital on short notice takes the bed that is open. If the private room matters, ask at admission what the facility's policy is when a private bed opens up and whether the resident keeps their place on the list. That question is cheaper to ask before the move than after it.

What costs less than a nursing home in Illinois?

Two settings come up in almost every family conversation, and on the survey numbers both are cheaper than a semi-private nursing home bed in Illinois:

• Assisted living at $6,219 a month. That is $2,085 less than a semi-private nursing home room, about 25% less. It buys help with daily activities, meals and supervision, not 24-hour skilled nursing. If the person needs a lift, a feeding tube or wound care, assisted living is the wrong setting no matter what it costs. See assisted living versus nursing home cost for where the line sits.
• Home care at $36 an hour. The survey's Illinois median is $36 an hour, which is $6,864 a month at 44 hours a week, a dollar an hour above the national rate. At that level of help, home care costs more than assisted living and less than a nursing home. Push the hours to round-the-clock and the arithmetic flips hard: 168 hours a week at $36 an hour is $6,048 a week.

Adult day health care is the third option and the cheapest per day, at a survey median of $91 a day in Illinois against $95 nationally. It only works if the person can be safely home at night and someone can do the transport, which is why it usually shows up as a supplement to family care rather than a replacement for it. Our comparison of home care and nursing home costs works through the break-even at different hours per week.

Does Medicare pay for an Illinois nursing home stay?

Only for a short, skilled stay, and only after a hospital admission. Medicare Part A covers up to 100 days per benefit period if the person had an inpatient hospital stay of at least three days and needs skilled care such as physical therapy, wound care or IV medication. For 2026, Medicare.gov lists the cost sharing this way:

• Days 1 to 20: $0 a day, after the $1,736 Part A deductible.
• Days 21 to 100: $217 a day.
• Day 101 and beyond: you pay everything.

The deductible is per benefit period, not per year, and you do not pay it twice if you already paid it for a hospital stay in the same benefit period. What Medicare does not pay for is custodial care, meaning the bathing, dressing, meals and supervision that most long-stay residents actually need. That distinction, not the 100-day cap, is why families get surprised by the first invoice. We cover the coverage rules in what Medicare covers in a nursing home, and the transition out of a covered stay in what happens when Medicare stops paying for rehab.

Does Illinois Medicaid pay for nursing home care?

Yes, and for a long stay it is usually the payer that matters. Illinois Medicaid covers nursing facility care for residents who pass two separate tests: an income and resource test, and a level-of-care test where the state agrees the person needs nursing-facility care. Passing the financial test without the level-of-care approval gets you a denial, and that is a common reason applications stall.

Illinois runs its long-term care eligibility through the Department of Healthcare and Family Services. HFS notes that the long-term care eligibility rules changed on January 1, 2012 under the federal Deficit Reduction Act, with further changes from July 1, 2012 under the state's SMART Act, and that the rules on property transfers and penalties apply to anyone entering a skilled nursing facility, a supportive living facility, or receiving in-home care. Applications are filed through the local DHS Family Community Resource Center, and the state's Application for Benefits Eligibility system, ABE, handles long-term services and supports applications.

HFS sets the income limits, the resource limits and the personal needs allowance, and they are updated rather than frozen, so this page does not restate them. Get the current figures from HFS or your FCRC. The federal rules underneath, including the 60-month look-back on asset transfers and the penalty for gifts made inside it, are the same in every state; our guides to what Medicaid counts as an asset and the look-back period explain them.

The spouse who stays home is not expected to spend down to nothing. Federal spousal impoverishment rules let that spouse keep a protected share of the couple's countable resources and a monthly maintenance allowance, indexed every year; our spousal impoverishment guide has the 2026 figures. For the paperwork itself, start with how to apply for long-term care Medicaid.

Supportive living, the Community Care Program and the options Illinois has that other states do not

Illinois has two programs worth knowing about before anyone signs a nursing home admission, because both exist specifically to keep people out of one.

Supportive living facilities. Illinois licenses a category called the supportive living facility, which is built around Medicaid-eligible residents rather than private-pay ones and sits between assisted living and a nursing home in the level of care it provides. HFS names supportive living facilities alongside skilled nursing facilities in its long-term care eligibility rules, which is why the same asset and transfer rules apply. It is not a nursing home and it cannot serve someone who needs 24-hour skilled nursing, but for a person who needs help with daily activities and medication and has limited income, it is often the setting that keeps them out of institutional care.

The Community Care Program. Run by the Illinois Department on Aging, the Community Care Program has existed since 1979 and provides in-home and community-based services to older adults who would otherwise need nursing home care. Its published eligibility list is specific: age 60 or older, a U.S. citizen or an eligible non-citizen in the covered categories, an Illinois resident, and non-exempt assets of $17,500 or less, with the home, car and personal furnishings treated as exempt. Services include care coordination, in-home services, adult day services, emergency home response and an automated medication dispenser. That asset test is the Department on Aging's own figure and it is the one number in this section a family can act on today.

Medicaid home and community-based waivers are the other route, and the wait can be the real obstacle rather than the eligibility rules. Our guide to Medicaid waivers for home care covers how those programs are structured and how to apply.

How do I check what a specific Illinois facility charges?

Ask for the rate schedule in writing. A phone quote is usually the base semi-private rate and it will not include the therapy, pharmacy and laundry lines that show up on the first invoice. Two facilities that quote within $200 of each other can end up $800 apart once the extras land.

For quality, use Medicare's Care Compare at medicare.gov/care-compare. It lists every Medicare-certified nursing home in Illinois with inspection results, staffing hours per resident day and ownership, and the staffing figure is the one to read first. Illinois licenses, regulates and inspects its long-term care facilities through the Illinois Department of Public Health, and IDPH states that the state has approximately 1,200 long-term care facilities serving more than 100,000 residents, with IDPH also assisting CMS with federal certification. IDPH publishes quarterly reports of nursing home violators and takes complaints through its Healthcare Facilities Complaint Form.

If the problem is not the price but the care, the Illinois Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program, run by the Department on Aging, advocates for residents and is reached through the Senior HelpLine at 1-800-252-8966 (711 TRS). Suspected abuse or neglect can be reported at 1-866-800-1409. Both are state numbers, and neither requires the family to go through the facility first.

If you are weighing a nursing home against assisted living, our guide to choosing a nursing home covers the questions that get a straight answer on a tour. The Illinois cost pages on this site break the same survey data down by care type at Illinois nursing home costs, and the calculator at care cost calculator will run the monthly number against your own hours and assets.

Where these numbers come from

State cost figures are medians from the CareScout Cost of Care Survey, 2025 edition, fieldwork July through November 2025: the Illinois row and the national row of the published median cost tables. The 2026 Medicare deductible of $1,736, the $217 daily coinsurance for days 21 through 100 and the 100-day limit per benefit period are from Medicare.gov's skilled nursing facility coverage page, checked in October 2026. The split between skilled care and custodial care is Medicare.gov's. The long-term care eligibility timeline, the supportive living facility reference, the DHS Family Community Resource Center application route and the ABE system are from the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services long-term services and supports page. The Community Care Program description, its 1979 start date, its eligibility list and the $17,500 non-exempt asset limit are from the Illinois Department on Aging's Community Care Program page. The count of approximately 1,200 long-term care facilities serving more than 100,000 residents, and IDPH's licensing and inspection role, are from the Illinois Department of Public Health nursing homes page. The ombudsman program and the Senior HelpLine and abuse-reporting numbers are from the Illinois Department on Aging. Illinois Medicaid income limits, resource limits and the personal needs allowance are set by HFS and change, so this page does not restate them; confirm the current figures with HFS or your FCRC. This is general information about program rules, not financial, legal or tax advice for a particular situation.