Pennsylvania home care agency license, explained

Who needs a Pennsylvania home care agency license

Yes. Any organization that supplies, arranges or schedules caregivers for a fee in a client's home needs a Department of Health license before it operates or advertises.

The rule is written broadly on purpose. It covers a company with forty caregivers and a single owner who books three companion clients a week, and it covers for-profit and nonprofit organizations alike. The trigger is the business model, not the size: if you are paid to put a worker into someone's residence to help them live there, you are in scope.

The license also bans holding yourself out as an agency before you have one. That matters for the order you do things in. A website that takes bookings, a flyer at a senior center, or a listing that invites calls can count as holding out, so marketing waits until the license is on the wall. The sequence that gets you there is laid out in the licensing guide.

Pennsylvania bars any entity from operating, maintaining or holding itself out as a home care agency or registry without a Department of Health license. — 28 Pa. Code § 611.2, Pennsylvania Code, retrieved 2026-09-27

Chapter 611 applies to home care agencies and registries operated in Pennsylvania, whether profit or nonprofit. — 28 Pa. Code § 611.3, Pennsylvania Code, retrieved 2026-09-27

What counts as home care services under Chapter 611

Home care services in Pennsylvania mean non-skilled help at home: personal care, help with household tasks, companionship, respite and specialized care, all directed by the client or their representative.

Personal care is the hands-on end of it. The regulation lists help with self-administered medications, feeding, mouth and skin care, shaving, walking, bathing, grooming, dressing, toileting and transfers. Companionship is the lighter end: socializing, support, and help with what the rules call instrumental activities of daily living, which in practice means errands, meals, laundry and light housekeeping.

None of that is skilled nursing or therapy. Once you want to send a nurse to change a dressing or a therapist to run exercises, you are describing a home health agency, which is licensed under a different chapter with different rules. Keeping the service list honest in your application, and later in the packet each client receives, is what keeps you on the non-medical side of that line.

Chapter 611 defines personal care to include help with self-administered medications, feeding, bathing, dressing, toileting and transfer activities, among others. — 28 Pa. Code § 611.5, Pennsylvania Code, retrieved 2026-09-27

Companionship services are defined as socialization, support and assistance with instrumental activities of daily living. — 28 Pa. Code § 611.5, Pennsylvania Code, retrieved 2026-09-27

Organizations Chapter 611 does not cover

Licensed home health agencies, durable medical equipment suppliers, volunteer providers and certain Medicaid financial management organizations are carved out of the home care license.

The home health exclusion is the one that trips people up. A home health agency already holds its own Department of Health license for skilled services, so it does not need a second one to add non-medical visits. If you are starting from scratch, though, you cannot pick the lighter license and then add nursing later without going through the other licensing process.

The volunteer carve-out is narrow. A church visiting program that charges nothing is outside the rules; the same program that starts billing families for its time is not. The fee is what brings an organization into scope, so the moment money changes hands the exclusion ends.

Home health care agencies, durable medical equipment providers and volunteer providers are excluded from Pennsylvania's home care agency chapter. — 28 Pa. Code § 611.3, Pennsylvania Code, retrieved 2026-09-27

The license belongs to a business at a physical address

The Department of Health licenses an organization at a specific office, so the business entity and a real street address both have to exist before an application makes sense.

That is why the entity decision comes first here, not last. The application names the legal owner, and that owner is either you personally or a company you have already registered with the Department of State. Most founders who plan to employ caregivers form that company before applying, whether through the state's own filing portal or through a formation platform that also tracks the yearly filings, because a caregiver injury or a client complaint lands on whoever holds the license.

The address matters just as much. The Department's own FAQ says a virtual office will not do, because the license lists the physical location and has to be posted there. Running the agency from your home is allowed, with one catch the FAQ spells out: unannounced inspections after licensure then happen in your home.

The structure choices themselves are compared in the entity page.

The Department of Health does not accept a virtual office for a home care agency, because the physical address is printed on the license and the license must be posted there. — Pennsylvania Department of Health, Home Care Agency/Registry License FAQ, retrieved 2026-09-27

An agency may be run from the owner's home, but post-licensure unannounced on-site inspections will then take place in that home. — Pennsylvania Department of Health, Home Care Agency/Registry License FAQ, retrieved 2026-09-27

One license per office, and no branch offices

Every physical location needs its own license, its own application and its own fee, because Pennsylvania home care has no branch-office category.

Owners expanding into a second county often assume a satellite office rides on the first license. It does not. The regulation requires each location to be separately licensed, and the Department's FAQ is blunt that branches do not exist in home care. A second office is a second initial application.

You can widen the area one office serves without opening another. The FAQ describes adding counties by letter, with a staffing, supervision and training plan required when the new counties do not border your home county. What that costs in fees is on the startup cost page.

Each physical location of a Pennsylvania home care agency or registry must be separately licensed, with a separate application and fee. — 28 Pa. Code § 611.2, Pennsylvania Code, retrieved 2026-09-27

The Department of Health states that branch offices do not exist in home care, so each additional location needs its own initial application. — Pennsylvania Department of Health, Home Care Agency/Registry License FAQ, retrieved 2026-09-27

Applications now go through the Department's online portal

Initial applications, renewals and ownership changes are filed online with the Division of Home Health; mail and email submissions stopped being accepted on March 31, 2026.

Older guides, and even some of the Department's own downloadable material, still describe mailing a paper packet with a check. Treat those instructions as out of date. The home care page now points to the Initial Provider Application portal and lists a resource account for application questions.

Before you open the portal, decide whether you are applying as an agency or as a registry, because the application asks you to specify the type. That choice changes who employs the caregivers, and it is worked through on the agency-or-registry page.

March 31, 2026The Pennsylvania Department of Health stopped accepting mailed or emailed home care license submissions effective March 31, 2026. — Pennsylvania Department of Health, Home Care, retrieved 2026-09-27

Questions