Nursing Homes in Minnesota: Cost & Medicaid (2026)

A nursing home is the priciest long-term care in Minnesota, costing more than most families can cover out of pocket for years. A semi-private room in the state runs a median of about $127,750 a year and a private room about $166,440, both above the national medians of $114,975 and $129,575.1 What makes it survivable for most long-term residents is Medical Assistance, Minnesota's Medicaid program, which pays for nursing-facility care for people who qualify.

This guide covers what a nursing home is, how to check a facility's quality before you choose one, what it actually costs in Minnesota, and how Medical Assistance pays for long-term care.

In This Guide

• Key Takeaways
• What a Nursing Home Is
• How to Check a Facility's Quality
• What a Nursing Home Costs in Minnesota
• Does Medical Assistance Pay for Nursing Homes?
• Frequently Asked Questions

What a Nursing Home Is

In Minnesota, a nursing home is a skilled nursing facility. It provides 24-hour licensed nursing care, help with daily activities like bathing and dressing, and rehabilitation services such as physical, occupational, and speech therapy. That round-the-clock nursing is the line that separates it from assisted living, which is built for people who need help with daily tasks but not constant skilled care. A nursing home exists for medical needs those settings can't meet, like managing a feeding tube, IV medications, or an open pressure wound.

People arrive at a nursing home along two different paths, and it pays to keep them straight because they're funded differently. The first is short-term rehabilitation, often after a hospital stay for a stroke, a fall, or surgery, where the goal is to recover and go home. Medicare helps with that short rehab stay under specific conditions: it covers up to 100 days of skilled nursing facility care per benefit period generally after a qualifying three-day inpatient hospital stay, at $0 a day for the first 20 days once the Part A deductible is met (usually already paid during the hospital stay) and a daily coinsurance starting on day 21.4 The second path is long-term custodial care, where someone needs ongoing nursing and supervision they can't safely get at home. Medicare does not pay for that long-term custodial stay.4 That's the care families worry about affording, and it's where Medical Assistance becomes the main payer.

How to Check a Facility's Quality

Quality varies widely from one nursing home to the next, and Minnesota gives you several free tools to vet a place before you commit. Use more than one. Each shows you something the others don't.

Start with state oversight. Minnesota nursing homes are licensed by the Minnesota Department of Health through its Health Regulation Division, which handles facility certification, regulation and licensing, and each license must be renewed every year.2 When you tour a facility, ask to see its most recent survey results and look for a pattern of repeat deficiencies rather than reacting to a single old citation.

Next, check two separate scorecards, because Minnesota publishes one the federal government doesn't. On Medicare Care Compare, a nursing home gets an overall rating from 1 to 5 stars that combines health inspections, staffing, and quality measures, with a separate star rating for each of those three.2 Minnesota then layers on its own Nursing Home Report Card, created by the Departments of Human Services and Health with the University of Minnesota, which gives each facility one to five stars on each of its quality measures, from resident quality of life and family satisfaction to inspection results, hours of direct care, and staff retention.2 Reading both gives you a fuller picture than either alone, and the staffing numbers deserve a close look on their own, since how many nurses and aides a facility keeps per resident shapes day-to-day care more than almost anything else.

Finally, know who to call for help. The Minnesota Office of Ombudsman for Long-Term Care, an independent state agency, investigates complaints and advocates for residents.2 An ombudsman can be a candid, on-the-ground source of information about specific facilities in your area before you ever sign anything.

What a Nursing Home Costs in Minnesota

Nursing-home care is expensive everywhere, and Minnesota sits above the national midpoint. According to the CareScout (Genworth) Cost of Care Survey, the 2025 median in Minnesota was about $127,750 a year (roughly $10,646 a month) for a semi-private room and about $166,440 a year (roughly $13,870 a month) for a private room, the 21st and 14th highest among the states.1 Both run above the national medians of about $114,975 a year (about $315 a day) for a semi-private room and about $129,575 a year (about $355 a day) for a private room, and the private-room gap is the wide one.1 These are medians from an industry survey, not government rates and not maximums, and CareScout cautions that actual costs vary with care needs, provider availability, and local market conditions, so one facility can land well above or below the state median.1

To put that in context, the same 2025 survey put Minnesota's assisted-living median at roughly $77,790 to $78,870 a year (CareScout publishes both figures for the state), above the national median of $6,200 a month ($74,400 a year).1 A nursing-home room costs far more. In-home care is no bargain here either: a non-medical caregiver runs a median of about $44 an hour in Minnesota, roughly $100,672 a year at 44 hours a week, which is the 6th highest rate in the country and about a quarter above the national hourly rate of $35.1 Minnesota, in short, runs above the national median in every one of these settings.1 Families still look hard at whether assisted living or in-home care can meet the need before moving to a nursing home, and at these prices it's the reason most long-term nursing-home residents in Minnesota end up relying on Medical Assistance rather than paying privately for years.

Does Medical Assistance Pay for Nursing Homes?

Yes, and this is the single most important thing to understand about paying for a Minnesota nursing home. Medical Assistance is Minnesota's Medicaid program, run by the Department of Human Services, and it covers nursing-facility care for people who qualify.3 Qualifying turns on two findings that run on separate tracks. Here's how the pieces fit together.

Level of care. Before Medical Assistance will pay for a nursing facility, you need a MnCHOICES assessment that confirms you meet the nursing-home level of care. It is delivered through the long-term care consultation services of Minnesota Statutes 256B.0911, which the statute requires be coordinated with preadmission screening. The consultation and the screening are related, not the same thing.3 This is the medical side of eligibility, separate from the money side below. The same assessment is also the gateway to community-based options, principally the Elderly Waiver, which can deliver long-term care, including customized living in an assisted living facility, instead of a nursing home. The waiver adds three conditions beyond level of care: you must be age 65 or older, be eligible for Medical Assistance, and need services it can provide for less than the cost of care in a nursing home.3

The financial test. Minnesota's asset limit is more generous than the federal SSI standard of $2,000: $3,000 for a single person and $6,000 for a couple, plus $200 per dependent.3 Someone whose income runs over the program's limit can still qualify through a medical spenddown, where the cost of their care is set against their income. A married couple with one spouse staying in the community is protected by spousal-impoverishment rules. Because these figures depend on your household and can change, confirm the current numbers with DHS before you apply.

Estate recovery. After a resident dies, Minnesota can pursue a claim against the estate of someone who received Medical Assistance at age 55 or older, but the claim is limited to the Medical Assistance that consisted of nursing facility services, home and community-based services, and related hospital and prescription drug services. It does not reach every Medicaid service a person used after 55.3 Federal and state exemptions apply on top of that, so recovery is not automatic in every case.

Learn More

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The information on Brevy.com is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional legal, financial, or medical advice. Rules vary by state and program and change frequently. Always verify with the relevant agency or a qualified professional. Brevy is not a law firm, financial advisor, or healthcare provider.