Home Care Costs Ontario: Public vs Private and What to Budget

What Public Home Care Costs (Nothing)

Publicly funded home care through Ontario Health atHome is fully covered by OHIP. There is no co-payment, no means test, and no income threshold. If your parent qualifies based on the care coordinator's clinical assessment, the services are free.

What is covered: personal support workers for bathing, dressing, transfers, and meal preparation; registered nursing visits for wound care, medication management, and clinical monitoring; physiotherapy and occupational therapy; speech-language pathology; social work; and some medical supplies.

The catch is capacity, not cost. Personal support hours are capped at roughly 60 per month — about two hours per day. Nursing is typically limited to two visits daily. For a parent who needs basic morning and evening help, that may be enough. For someone who needs supervision throughout the day, it is not close.

What Private Home Care Costs

When public hours run out, families pay out of pocket for private care. The rates vary by provider, region, and level of care:

Twenty-four-hour care using a shift model — where two or three PSWs rotate through the day — is the most expensive option. In the Greater Toronto Area, families routinely spend $12,000 to $20,000 per month for round-the-clock private care. In smaller cities, rates are somewhat lower, but $10,000 per month is a reasonable minimum estimate.

For context, a basic long-term care bed in Ontario costs $2,129.17 per month (the province-wide standardized co-payment as of July 2026). That is less than one-fifth of what 24-hour private home care costs in most parts of the province.

Blending Public and Private Care

Most families end up with a hybrid arrangement: publicly funded hours through Ontario Health atHome supplemented by privately paid PSW visits for the gaps. A common setup looks like this:

• Ontario Health atHome provides a PSW for one hour each morning (bathing, dressing) and one hour each evening (preparing for bed)
• The family hires a private PSW for four additional hours midday (meal preparation, medication reminders, companionship)
• A family member covers evenings and weekends

Total private cost in this scenario: roughly $3,000 to $5,400 per month, depending on the hourly rate and schedule. Add in incidentals — incontinence supplies, mobility aids, home modifications — and the real monthly out-of-pocket cost is often $4,000 to $6,000.

Research from the Ontario Caregiver Organization puts the average out-of-pocket caregiving expense at $758 per month, but that figure includes families who rely heavily on informal care. Families using significant private PSW hours spend substantially more.

Tax Credits That Offset Costs

Ontario offers two relevant credits for families paying for home care:

Ontario Seniors Care at Home Tax Credit — a refundable credit for seniors aged 70 or older with family net income under $65,000. It covers up to 25% of eligible medical expenses, capped at $6,000 in expenses, for a maximum credit of $1,500 per year. The credit phases out at 5% of family income above $35,000.

Ontario Senior Home Safety Tax Credit — a refundable credit worth 25% of eligible home renovation expenses (grab bars, stairlifts, wheelchair ramps) up to $10,000, for a maximum credit of $2,500.

Multigenerational Home Renovation Tax Credit — a federal credit equal to 15% of renovation costs up to $50,000 (maximum credit of $7,500) for building a secondary suite to house a senior relative.

None of these credits comes close to covering the full cost of private care, but they reduce the effective cost by $3,000 to $5,000 per year for families that qualify.

When to Consider Long-Term Care Instead

The financial math shifts as private hours accumulate. At the $25–$45 hourly range above, four hours every day costs roughly $3,000–$5,400 per month; additional hours can push the bill above $5,000. A long-term care bed at $2,129 per month (basic) or $3,042 per month (private room) becomes dramatically cheaper.

The problem is access: the provincial waitlist currently has roughly 50,000 people on it, with high-demand urban centres reported at three to five years. Families paying for expensive private home care while waiting for a long-term care bed need a financial plan that accounts for months or years of out-of-pocket costs.

The Ontario Continuing Care Navigator includes a rate reduction worksheet for calculating long-term care subsidy eligibility and a family alignment worksheet for deciding when the financial and clinical evidence points toward a facility move.

See more Ontario guides →