A nursing home in Georgia costs about $8,821 a month for a shared room and $9,429 for a private room. These are the Georgia median prices in the CareScout Cost of Care Survey 2025, the most recent one out in 2026. Three years in a shared room at that price comes to about $317,550.
A nursing home bill this size is hard to plan for, and Medicare covers very little long-term nursing home care. Knowing the real numbers lets you plan before a crisis instead of during one.
Typical Nursing Home Costs in Georgia (2026)
These are Georgia median monthly prices. Half of the providers surveyed charge more and half charge less:
- Nursing home, shared (semi-private) room: $8,821 per month ($290 a day)
- Nursing home, private room: $9,429 per month ($310 a day)
- Assisted living, one-bedroom: $5,300 per month
- In-home care aide: $32 an hour, or about $6,101 per month for 44 hours a week
- Adult day health care: $1,950 per month (5 days a week)
The survey does not list memory care as its own price. If you are looking at memory care, ask each facility for its monthly rate in writing.
Costs change by location. In the Atlanta area, the median is $9,277 a month for a shared room, $9,885 for a private room, and $5,600 for assisted living. In rural Georgia, a shared room runs about $8,517 a month. These are prices for people paying on their own, not what Medicaid pays. To compare areas, see our Georgia long-term care cost statistics by metro. They show yearly prices for Georgia metro areas. Next to each is the median income of households there headed by someone 65 or older.
Georgia costs less than the country as a whole. Across the U.S., the median price for a shared room is $9,581 a month. Here is the same shared room in Georgia and nearby states:
- Alabama: $8,334
- Georgia: $8,821
- South Carolina: $9,034
- Tennessee: $9,429
- North Carolina: $9,733
- Florida: $10,342
Source: CareScout Cost of Care Survey 2025 (formerly the Genworth Cost of Care Survey), Georgia, metro, state, and U.S. medians. Monthly figures are the survey’s published monthly medians or its yearly medians divided by 12. Atlanta-area and rural Georgia figures come from CareScout’s online Cost of Care lookup, yearly medians divided by 12.
The monthly price usually covers your room, meals, 24-hour nursing care, help with bathing, dressing, and eating, and giving out medicines. Some things often cost extra, such as certain medicines and therapy, hair care, a private phone or TV, and trips outside the home. Ask each nursing home for a written list of its extra charges before you sign the admission papers.
What Does Medicare Actually Cover?
Medicare covers very little long-term nursing home care. This surprises many families. To see how the two programs differ, read Medicare vs. Medicaid for nursing home care in Georgia.
Medicare Part A covers nursing home care only after at least three days admitted to a hospital as an inpatient. Days spent “under observation” do not count. Even then:
- Days 1–20: Medicare covers 100% of approved costs
- Days 21–100: You pay a daily copay of $217 a day in 2026 (CMS)
- After day 100: Medicare pays nothing
Medicare is designed for short-term rehabilitation after a medical event, not for long-term custodial care. Medicare does not pay for custodial care, which is ongoing help with daily activities like bathing, dressing, and eating. Once a resident needs only that kind of help, Medicare stops paying.
What About Long-Term Care Insurance?
Long-term care insurance can help, but many families either do not have it or have a policy that does not cover the full cost of care. Premiums have increased substantially in recent years, and many insurers have left the market.
If you have a long-term care policy, review it now, before you need it, to understand exactly what it covers, how long it pays, and what the elimination period is.
A few other sources can cover part of the bill. VA benefits can help veterans and surviving spouses who qualify. Some life insurance policies let you draw money early for long-term care. Some families sell or borrow against a home. Each has its own rules and can affect Medicaid later. For example, money from selling a home counts as an asset for Medicaid.
Who Ends Up Paying?
A common payment path looks like this:
- Medicare pays for short-term rehabilitation after a qualifying hospital stay (in full for days 1–20, with a $217 daily copay for days 21–100)
- Private pay from savings and assets
- Medicaid once assets are nearly exhausted
The problem: spending down to Medicaid eligibility means spending almost everything first. A single person must reduce countable assets to $2,000 before Medicaid starts paying. Here is how to qualify for Medicaid nursing home care in Georgia. A married couple has more protection. In 2026, Georgia lets the spouse who stays at home keep up to $162,660 in countable assets, but everything over that amount still has to be spent down.
Assets are only half the test. In 2026, Georgia Medicaid for nursing home care also has an income limit of $2,982 a month for one person. If your income is higher, you can still qualify by setting up a special trust called a Qualified Income Trust, often called a Miller trust.
Qualifying for Medicaid does not make the nursing home free. Once Medicaid starts paying, most of your monthly income goes to the nursing home. Georgia lets a resident keep $70 a month for personal needs (source: Georgia DFCS Medicaid Manual, 2026 limits).
How to Protect Against These Costs
Legal planning, done early enough, can protect a substantial portion of your assets from nursing home spend-down. The primary tools are:
- Medicaid Asset Protection Trust: Transfers assets out of your countable estate. Assets moved in more than five years before you ask Medicaid to pay are outside the lookback, so that move causes no transfer penalty. No trust is a guarantee.
- Spousal protection planning: For married couples, strategies to maximize what the at-home spouse keeps.
- Exempt asset repositioning: Converting countable assets into Medicaid-exempt assets within legal limits.
The Cost of Waiting
Because of the five-year lookback rule, Georgia elder law planning works best years before you need care. A family that moves assets into a Medicaid asset protection trust at 65 is past the five-year lookback by 70. A family that waits until 80 and then needs a nursing home at 81 cannot use that trust, because anything moved at 80 is still inside the five-year lookback when the Medicaid application is filed.
Georgia’s own Medicaid office uses a higher monthly nursing home cost than the CareScout survey’s $8,821 median. It uses an average private-pay nursing home cost of $11,122 a month, in effect since April 2026, to set the penalty for money given away during the five-year lookback.
For every $11,122 given away in the five years before applying, Georgia holds back about one month of Medicaid nursing home coverage. CareScout’s $8,821 is a median, the middle price. The state’s figure is an average (source: Georgia DFCS Medicaid Manual, 2026 limits).
The cost of not planning is not just financial. It is the stress of watching everything you saved disappear month by month, and leaving your spouse or children in a difficult position.
If you want to know what nursing home costs would mean for your family, start with a free 15-minute call with Shawn.
