Before You Sign the Personal Care Home Contract: What Pennsylvania Expects It to Say

By Philly Senior Advisor Care Team — Licensing & Memory Care Team · October 10, 2026

Two Weeks After the Hospital Discharge, a Folder Lands on the Kitchen Table

Picture a daughter in Mount Airy whose father has just been discharged from a Philadelphia hospital after a fall. A personal care home near Germantown has a bed, the administrator is friendly, and a folder of paperwork arrives with a request to sign by Friday. Families in exactly this spot often treat the admission contract as a formality, because the tour went well and the clock is running. But the personal care home admission contract in Pennsylvania is one of the few documents in the whole long-term care journey that state regulation tells the home what it must say, and reading it against that list takes about twenty minutes. Those twenty minutes can prevent months of dispute about rate increases, refunds, and what happens if a resident needs more care than the home can give.

This guide is written for families in Philadelphia, Montgomery, Bucks, Delaware, and Chester counties who are looking at a personal care home (PCH) licensed by the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services under 55 Pa. Code Chapter 2600. If the building is a licensed Assisted Living Residence, the governing rules are Chapter 2800 and the contract has additional required pieces, but much of the reasoning below carries over. Nursing homes are a different world entirely, licensed by the Department of Health, with their own admission rules. Before relying on any specific provision described here, read the current regulation text on the DHS website, because the regulations are amended from time to time and this guide is general information, not legal advice.

What Pennsylvania Says the Contract Has to Contain

Chapter 2600 requires a written resident-home contract, and the core idea is that the resident or the resident's designee and the home's administrator both sign it, with the resident receiving a copy. The contract is supposed to spell out, in plain terms, the rate the resident will pay, which services and items that rate covers, and which are extra. It is also supposed to address how and when the home can change the rate, the conditions under which the home can ask a resident to leave, and how prepaid money is handled when a resident moves out or dies. If a draft you are handed is silent on any of these, that silence is the first question to put in writing to the administrator.

One practical reading tip: look for the difference between a base monthly rate and the services that are billed separately. In Greater Philadelphia, a personal care home advertising a base rate in the range of roughly $4,800 to $6,900 a month can add charges for medication management, incontinence care, extra assistance with bathing, or a higher level of dementia supervision. Those add-ons are legal when disclosed, but they must be disclosed up front. Ask for the home's current written fee schedule and staple it to your copy of the contract, so that a later bill that does not match the schedule can be compared line by line.

Rate Increases, the 30-Day Rule, and Who Absorbs the Surprise

The most common source of complaints that families bring to the Long-Term Care Ombudsman is the rate that quietly rises after the first year, or a care-level charge that appears after a change in condition. Pennsylvania's personal care home regulations require advance written notice before a home increases a resident's rate, and the notice period in the regulation is thirty days. Treat that as a floor, not a target. A home in Bryn Mawr or Wayne that raises its rate by a few hundred dollars with thirty days' notice has met the rule, but that does not help a family whose monthly budget was built around the number in the original contract.

So ask the questions that the regulation does not answer for you. How often does this home typically raise rates, and by roughly what percentage? Is the increase tied to a published schedule, or to the administrator's discretion? When a resident's needs grow, who decides that the resident has moved into a higher care tier, and is there a written assessment behind the decision? A good home will answer these in writing and will not mind that you asked. If the answers come back vague, that vagueness tells you something about how the next rate letter will be handled.

When the Home Wants the Resident to Leave, and When the Resident Wants to Go

The contract also has to deal with discharge, and this is where families are most often caught off guard. Pennsylvania allows a personal care home to end a resident's stay only for certain reasons, such as needs that exceed what the home is licensed or equipped to provide, nonpayment, or conduct that endangers others, and it generally requires written notice with a stated reason and time to arrange somewhere else. Our separate guide on eviction notices and resident rights in Pennsylvania covers that process in depth. For purposes of the contract, the key point is that the document should not claim rights for the home that the regulation does not give it. A clause that lets the home require a resident to leave in a few days for any reason is a red flag, and you can ask DHS or the ombudsman whether it conflicts with Chapter 2600 before you sign.

The mirror-image question is what it costs the resident to leave. Many Philadelphia-area homes ask for notice, often thirty days, before a resident departs, and the contract should state how a final month is prorated and when any prepaid amount or deposit is returned. The regulation expects refunds of prepaid money to be handled within a defined period after the resident leaves or dies, and a contract that is vague about the timeline is worth asking about. Families who skip this part sometimes discover, after a death or a move to a nursing home, that they are arguing about a month of rent with no written rule to point to.

Where Medicaid, SSI, and Community HealthChoices Fit Into the Paperwork

If there is any chance the resident will eventually rely on public benefits, the contract needs to say how the home treats that. Community HealthChoices (CHC), Pennsylvania's Medicaid managed-care program for long-term services and supports, can help pay for personal care services delivered in a PCH or Assisted Living Residence, but it does not pay room and board. Many small homes in North and Northeast Philadelphia and parts of Delaware County will accept residents who receive Supplemental Security Income and the state supplement, while others will not accept anyone who cannot pay privately. Ask directly: does this home accept residents who receive SSI, and will it keep a resident whose private funds run out, or does the contract require a move?

Residents who receive SSI are also entitled under Chapter 2600 to keep a small personal needs allowance out of their monthly income, and the home may not take it as part of the rate. Confirm the current dollar figure with DHS or the county Area Agency on Aging, since the amount can change. For Philadelphia residents, the Philadelphia Corporation for Aging (PCA) can explain the interplay among SSI, CHC, and the OPTIONS Program, which is a separate Department of Aging program funded by the Pennsylvania Lottery with a sliding fee scale. Keep these programs distinct in your mind and in your questions: they are paid for and administered differently, and the contract should not blur them.

A Short Pre-Signing Checklist You Can Use This Week

Before signing anything, verify the license first. The DHS facility search shows whether the home holds a regular or provisional license, its capacity, and its inspection history, and a provisional license changes how you should read every promise in the contract. Then read the contract against the checklist: rate and inclusions in writing, fee schedule attached, rate-change notice period, discharge reasons and notice, refund timeline, how personal funds are handled, and what the contract says about benefits like SSI or CHC. Ask the home for a blank copy a few days before the move-in date so that you are not reading it in the lobby on the day of admission.

Finally, get a second set of eyes. The ombudsman program housed within the Pennsylvania Department of Aging, your county Area Agency on Aging, or an elder law attorney in Philadelphia, Media, Doylestown, or West Chester can review a draft. A personal care home is both a home and a business, and the contract is where those two roles meet. A clear, regulation-consistent document is a good sign about the operator, and an evasive one is information you are better off having before the move rather than after.

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