What is Long Term Care?

Long-term care is a range of services and supports you may need to meet your health or personal needs over a long period of time. Most long-term care is not medical care, but rather assistance with the basic personal tasks of everyday life, sometimes called “Activities of Daily Living,” such as:

• Bathing
• Dressing
• Using the toilet
• Transferring (to or from bed or chair)
• Caring for incontinence
• Eating

Other common long-term care services and supports are assistance to complete what is called Instrumental Activities of Daily Living. These are household and other tasks that you may do every day, such as:

• Housework
• Preparing and cleaning up after meals
• Taking medication
• Shopping for groceries or clothes
• Using the telephone or other communication devices
• Managing money
• Caring of pets
• Responding to emergency alerts such as fire alarms

Paying for LTC

Long-term care services include personal care services like bathing, doing household chores, and other activities, to help you stay independent in your community. Long-term care also includes community services, such as meals, adult day care, and transportation services. Residential facilities, such as assisted living facilities and nursing homes, also provide long-term care services along with housing.
Depending on how much you need, these types of services can be expensive. Medicare and other health insurance do not include most long-term care services, so planning for how you might pay for long-term care becomes important. If you have fairly low income and savings, you may qualify for Medicaid, the federal public program that pays for most long-term care services. Other federal public programs, such as the Older Americans Act, and state-funded programs, pay for long-term care services, but, like Medicaid, these programs cover services for people with high levels of disability and low income and savings.
With 70 percent of us needing long-term care services at some point during our lives after turning age 65, and the limited coverage of public programs, there is a good chance you will have to pay for some or all of the services out of your personal income and savings. Even if you only need a little assistance at home with personal care, paying for long-term care out of your personal income and savings can be difficult. The cost of long term care can be anywhere from $5,000 to over 15,000 per month depending on whether the care is provided in-home, in an assisted living facility or in a nursing home facility. The cost in a nursing home facility will also depend on whether it is a private room or a semi-private room.

Costs of Care

The cost of long-term care depends on the type and amount of care you need, the provider you use, and where you live. Here are a few examples:

• Home health and home care services, provided in two-to-four-hour blocks of time referred to as “visits,” are generally more expensive in the evening, on weekends, and on holidays.
• The costs of services in some community programs, such as adult day service programs, are provided at a per-day rate, but vary based on the program’s costs and activities.
• Many facility-based programs charge extra for services provided beyond the basic room, food and housekeeping charges, although some may have “all inclusive” fees.

The national average costs for long-term care in the United States (in 2021) are:

• $260 per day or $7,908 per month for a semi-private room in a nursing home
• $297 per day or $9,034 per month for a private room in a nursing home
• $4,500 per month for care in an assisted living facility (for a one-bedroom unit)
• $23 per hour for a home health aide
• $22 per hour for homemaker services
• $80 per day for services in an adult day health care center