Short answerThe 2025 CareScout survey puts the Ohio median for a non-medical caregiver at $34 an hour. Skilled private duty nursing at home runs about $100 an hour, or $85 per visit. The published 'home health aide' monthly figure is unreliable for budgeting full-time care; see the caveat below.
The crossover math
At the Ohio median of $34 an hour, in-home care costs roughly:
| Hours per week | Approximate monthly cost |
|---|
| 10 hours | about $1,470 |
| 20 hours | about $2,950 |
| 40 hours | about $5,900 |
| 60 hours | about $8,850 |
| 168 hours (around the clock) | about $24,700 |
Calculated from the published Ohio median non-medical caregiver rate. Actual
Cleveland-area rates vary, and most agencies have minimum shift lengths that raise the effective cost
of short visits.
CareScout's Ohio 'home health aide' figure ($433 a month) is far lower than its 'homemaker services' figure ($6,483 a month) and lower than the hourly non-medical caregiver rate would suggest for full-time care. This is a real, published state median, not a transcription error, but it should not be read as the cost of full-time in-home care; CareScout itself has begun merging homemaker and home health aide reporting into a single 'non-medical caregiver' hourly category ($34 an hour in Ohio, $35 nationally) going forward, precisely because these older category definitions were inconsistent. For budgeting full-time in-home care, use the hourly non-medical caregiver rate multiplied by expected weekly hours, not the home health aide line.
The published Ohio assisted living median is $6,103 a month. So somewhere between
thirty and forty hours a week of in-home care, the arithmetic starts favouring a community —
and around-the-clock home care costs several times what assisted living does.
That said, arithmetic is not the whole decision. Staying home has real value
that does not show up in a table, and a spouse who is already providing care may be covering far more
than the paid hours suggest. The number is a starting point for the conversation, not the answer to it.
What senior care costs. The Ohio median is $6,103 a month for assisted living and $10,389 for a private nursing room. No Cleveland-specific median is published by any primary source, and no median exists for memory care anywhere in Ohio.
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