Home Care: What It Is and Who It's For

Non-medical support delivered in a senior's own home — from a few hours a week of help to full live-in care.

Home care allows a senior to stay in their own home while receiving help with the tasks that have become difficult to manage alone. It's one of the most flexible categories of senior care, since it can scale from a few hours a week up to around-the-clock coverage depending on need and budget.

Home care versus home health care

These two terms get used interchangeably but mean different things. Home care (sometimes called personal care or companion care) is non-medical — help with bathing, dressing, meal preparation, light housekeeping, medication reminders, transportation, and companionship, typically provided by a caregiver or home care aide. Home health care is skilled and medical — provided by licensed nurses or therapists, usually ordered by a physician, for things like wound care, injections, or physical therapy, often on a short-term basis following a hospital stay. Most families researching everyday support for an aging parent are looking for the non-medical kind.

Hourly versus live-in care

Home care is typically billed hourly, with agencies often requiring a minimum number of hours per visit or per week. Families needing more extensive coverage sometimes move to a live-in arrangement, where a caregiver stays in the home, or to 24-hour shift-based care with multiple caregivers rotating. Round-the-clock home care can end up costing as much as, or more than, a nursing home, since it isn't scaled down the way a facility's shared-staffing model is — worth factoring into the decision between home care and a community setting. See our cost overview for current Ohio state median in-home caregiver pricing.

Who tends to benefit most

Home care works well for seniors who strongly prefer to remain in their own home, have a home environment that's reasonably safe and manageable, and need a level of support that doesn't yet require the staffing and safety infrastructure of a residential community. It's also commonly used to supplement family caregivers who need relief, or to bridge a gap after a hospital discharge while a longer-term plan comes together.

Paying for home care

Most families pay privately for home care, though Ohio's Medicaid PASSPORT waiver can cover a range of in-home services for seniors who qualify financially and by care need — see Medicaid & PASSPORT Explained for how that works.