Straight answers about money
What home care actually costs here
Nobody puts numbers on their website. You have to call five agencies, sit through five pitches, and assemble the answer yourself. So here it is instead.
The number
Private-pay home care in the Lehigh Valley and the Poconos generally runs around $28 to $32 an hour in 2026. That is the market — us and everyone else. Agencies quoting far below that are usually either sending a rotation of whoever is free that morning, or not paying their caregivers enough to keep them.
To put that in a monthly shape:
| Schedule | Hours per week | Roughly per month |
|---|---|---|
| Mornings, weekdays | 20 | $2,400 – $2,800 |
| Half days, weekdays | 25 | $3,000 – $3,500 |
| Most of each day | 40 | $4,800 – $5,600 |
| Live-in or 24-hour | — | Quoted per day, not per hour |
Those are real numbers and for many families they are simply out of reach. Which is the entire reason for the next section.
Before you pay any of this, check whether you have to. A large share of the families who call us assuming they are private pay turn out to have a route they did not know about. It costs nothing to find out and it is the single most valuable fifteen minutes in this process.
Four things that lower the bill
- Act 150 or the OBRA waiver — if the person needing care is between 18 and 59 with a physical disability. Act 150 charges an income-based weekly fee capped at the cost of services; OBRA is a Medicaid waiver. Most families have never heard of either. Act 150 · OBRA
- Long-term care insurance — policies bought in the 1990s and 2000s are sitting unclaimed in filing cabinets all over this valley. If there is a policy, this is usually the smoothest path there is, and we bill it directly.
- VA benefits — the most frequently missed one of all. Homemaker and Home Health Aide services, Veteran Directed Care, and Aid and Attendance, which is paid in cash and can be spent on home care.
- Community HealthChoices — Pennsylvania's Medicaid managed long-term care program, generally for people 60 and over or on both Medicare and Medicaid.
Our guide to paying for home care in Pennsylvania covers all of them properly.
What actually drives the hourly rate
- How much help is physically needed. Transfers, two-person assistance and full personal care cost more than companionship and meals.
- The schedule. Nights, weekends and holidays cost more. Consistent weekday blocks cost less, because they are easier to staff well.
- How the hours are grouped. Four hours in one visit is cheaper per hour to deliver than four one-hour visits, and honest agencies price accordingly.
- Location. Rural Monroe County stops involve more driving than a block in central Allentown.
What we will not do
We do not quote a firm number over the phone before we have met the person. Anyone who does is guessing, and the guess is usually low so that it sounds good on the call — then it moves once the reality of the case turns up.
What we do instead: a free in-home assessment, then a written rate and schedule before anything starts. No deposit, no contract to sign to get the number.
One cost that is easy to miss. Care that is too thin is often more expensive than care that is enough. A fall, a missed medication or a readmission costs more — in money and in everything else — than the hours that would have prevented it. That is a real trade-off and worth weighing honestly rather than only counting the hourly rate.
Minimum hours, and why
We staff cases of twenty hours a week and up. That is not an upsell — it is what allows one consistent caregiver instead of a rotation, because nobody builds a living out of scattered four-hour visits. If you need less than that, say so and we will point you toward an agency built for short visits.
Talk to us
Call 610-466-5715. Tell us what is going on and we will tell you what it is likely to cost and which programs are worth chasing first — including when the honest answer is one we cannot bill.
Serving Lehigh, Northampton and Monroe counties. Our caregivers speak English, Spanish, Russian, Ukrainian and Farsi.