Pennsylvania Nursing Home Costs in 2026: Average Monthly Price

How much does a Pennsylvania nursing home cost per month?

The CareScout Cost of Care Survey is the pricing survey most state agencies, insurance carriers and financial planners work from. Its 2025 edition, with fieldwork from July through November 2025, reports these Pennsylvania medians:

Source: CareScout Cost of Care Survey, 2025 edition, Pennsylvania and national median cost tables. Monthly figures are the survey's published monthly medians. The home care annual figure assumes the survey's own 44 hours a week for 52 weeks.

A median is not a bill. Half of the Pennsylvania facilities in the survey charged more than $11,954 for a shared room and half charged less. Philadelphia, the Pittsburgh suburbs and the rural counties in between are separate markets, and the survey reports one state-level figure for all of them. Read it as the middle of the state, then get the actual rate from the two or three places you are seriously considering.

The quoted rate is also usually the base rate. Therapy supplies, incontinence products, transportation and a private-room premium tend to sit outside it. We list the usual extras in the costs that are not in the quoted monthly rate.

How does Pennsylvania compare with the national median?

The national median in the same survey was $9,581 a month for a semi-private room and $10,798 for a private room. Pennsylvania sits above both, by $2,373 and $2,890 a month. Over a year that is $28,470 and $34,675 more than the typical American facility, which is the difference between an affordable long stay and one that empties an account.

Where Pennsylvania lands on the national ladder depends on the room type. On the semi-private measure it ranked 17th of the 50 states, with Alaska highest at $27,831 a month and Texas lowest at $5,627. On private rooms it ranked 15th of the 49 states with a reported figure. A Texas semi-private room costs less than half what a Pennsylvania one does — $6,327 a month less on the same survey.

The oddity is inside the state's own price list. Pennsylvania's assisted living median of $6,480 is only about 5% above the national figure, and its home care rate of $34 an hour is a dollar below it, while its nursing home rate runs roughly 25% above. The survey reports prices, not causes, so we are not going to invent a reason for that split. Practically, it means the facility decision is where Pennsylvania families get hit hardest, and it is worth asking a discharge planner why a nursing home bed is being recommended over the cheaper settings. If a sibling lives in another state and is pushing to move a parent closer to them, our state-by-state nursing home cost table is the place to check the arithmetic before the move rather than after it.

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

In Pennsylvania the gap is $1,734 a month, about $20,805 a year, or $57 a day. That is wider than the national gap of roughly $1,217 a month, so the room choice costs a Pennsylvania family more than it costs the average American family.

A private room is not a medical benefit. Medicare and Pennsylvania's Medical Assistance program cover one when it is documented as medically necessary, for example when a roommate's care needs or infection status make sharing unsafe. Otherwise the family pays the premium. Some facilities also charge a differential for a bed by the window or a larger room, and that shows up on the rate schedule rather than in the survey.

What costs less than a nursing home in Pennsylvania?

Three settings come up in almost every family conversation about this, and all three are cheaper on paper in Pennsylvania:

• Assisted living at $6,480 a month. That is $5,474 less than a semi-private nursing home room, roughly 46% 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 not the right setting no matter what it costs. Our assisted living cost guide has the state table.
• Home care at $34 an hour. At the survey's 44 hours a week that runs $77,792 a year, or about $6,483 a month — close to assisted living on price and well under a nursing home. Push the hours to round-the-clock and the arithmetic flips hard: 168 hours a week at $34 an hour is $5,712 a week, more than $24,700 a month, which is why live-in coverage is usually a short-term bridge rather than a plan.
• Adult day care at $117 a day. The survey's Pennsylvania median is $117 per day of attendance, about $2,535 a month at five days a week. It is supervision and activity during working hours, not a substitute for overnight care, but it is the cheapest supervised option on the list and it lets a spouse keep working.

The care level decides this, not the price sheet. A person who needs skilled nursing at night cannot be served by 44 hours of home care, and a person who is mobile and mostly independent should not be paying for a nursing home bed. Our comparison of home care and nursing home costs walks through where the break-even sits.

Does Medicare pay for a Pennsylvania 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. Two numbers are worth holding next to each other: the 80 coinsurance days from 21 to 100 add up to $17,360 at $217 a day, and 100 days at the Pennsylvania semi-private median of $393 a day would cost $39,300 if the family paid for all of it. What Medicare does not pay for is custodial care — the bathing, dressing, meals and supervision that most long-stay residents need. That distinction, not the 100-day cap, is why families get surprised by the first bill. 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 Pennsylvania Medicaid pay for nursing home care?

Yes, and for a long stay it is usually the payer that matters. Pennsylvania calls its Medicaid program Medical Assistance, or MA. Long-term services and supports run through Community HealthChoices, the state's managed care program, which the Department of Aging describes as covering nursing facility care along with personal assistance, transportation and other home and community-based services.

Two tests apply, and they are separate. The first is financial: MA has limits on income and on countable resources, plus identity, citizenship, Pennsylvania residency and household composition requirements. The second is functional — the Department of Aging states plainly that to receive Medicaid long-term services and supports in Pennsylvania a person must also be evaluated and meet functional ability criteria. Passing the financial test without the functional one gets you a denial, and that is the single most common reason applications stall.

Apply online through COMPASS, or through your county assistance office. A resident who qualifies still contributes most of their monthly income to the facility and keeps a small personal needs allowance; the state sets the limits and the allowance and revises them each year, so this page does not restate dollar figures that will be stale by the time you read them. The federal rules behind all of this, including the 60-month look-back on asset transfers, are the same in every state; our guides to what Medicaid counts as an asset and the look-back period explain them, and the spousal impoverishment rules cover what the spouse at home may keep. For the paperwork itself, start with how to apply for long-term care Medicaid.

Two Pennsylvania programs are worth knowing before anyone moves. OPTIONS, run by the Department of Aging for people 60 and older who want to stay home, has no income requirement and may ask for a contribution toward the cost depending on income. LIFE is an integrated Medicare-Medicaid program for people 55 and older who qualify for both. Neither is a way around the eligibility rules, but both are cheaper than a nursing home bed when the care need fits.

Who do I call about a bill, a discharge or a complaint?

Ask the facility 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 problems with care, Pennsylvania's Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program, run by the Department of Aging, advocates for residents of nursing homes, assisted living facilities and personal care homes. The same department runs a 24-hour helpline at 1-800-490-8505 for reporting suspected abuse of an older adult, whether the person lives at home or in a facility. For Medicare coverage questions, PA MEDI provides free and confidential counseling through Pennsylvania's 52 local Area Agencies on Aging; it has been the state's SHIP program since 1995.

For quality, use Medicare's Care Compare at medicare.gov/care-compare. It lists every Medicare-certified nursing home in Pennsylvania with inspection results, staffing hours per resident day and ownership, and the staffing figure is the one to look at first. A state inspection history and a federal star rating do not always agree, and the disagreement is worth reading. Our guide to choosing a nursing home covers the questions that get a straight answer on a tour, and the care cost calculator will turn any of these monthly figures into a yearly number for your own budget.

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 Pennsylvania row and the national row of the published median cost tables, plus the survey's state ranking table. Rankings, percentages, annual totals and the day-count arithmetic on this page are computed from those medians and are labelled as arithmetic where they appear. 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. Pennsylvania program facts are from the Pennsylvania Department of Aging's caregiving guidance (Medical Assistance, Community HealthChoices, the functional eligibility evaluation, COMPASS, OPTIONS and LIFE), its Long-Term Care Ombudsman page, its PA MEDI page (52 Area Agencies on Aging) and its older-adult abuse reporting helpline, all read in October 2026. Pennsylvania MA income and resource limits and the personal needs allowance are set by the Department of Human Services and change annually, so this page does not restate them; confirm the current figures with the state or your county assistance office. This is general information about program rules, not financial, legal or tax advice for a particular situation.