Best Home Health Aide Certification Programs

Penn Foster’s home health aide training program is the best overall because it exceeds the education requirements for home health aides to work with agencies covered by Medicare.

The Penn Foster HHA course covers therapeutic communication skills, body systems, drug pathways, nutrition, home care procedures, the aging process, laws, ethics, and confidentiality. After completing the fully online coursework, students proceed to a 40-hour externship during which they practice crucial home health skills under the supervision of an experienced mentor. 

While Penn Foster offers assistance with externship placement, it’s ultimately up to the student to secure an externship in their area that meets the requirements for HHA education in their state. 

The course is fully online (with the exception of the externship), and is expected to take 13-16 months to complete.

Penn Foster is accredited by the Distance Education Accrediting Commission (DEAC), as well as several regional accreditation bodies, confirming the quality of education it provides. 

While the Penn Foster HHA program is more expensive than other options available to prospective students, the paid-in-full price of $989 is still an affordable way to break into the health care industry. If you can’t pay upfront, you can sign up for monthly autopay or monthly mail pay. There are also often discounts available.

Without a high school diploma, it’s hard to find professional education classes that are thorough, accredited, and provide career assistance services. Ashworth College offers one of the best fully online home health aide courses you can take with absolutely no prerequisites. 

In this course, students learn how to care for patients who are elderly, those who have disabilities, and those who are chronically or critically ill. Topics covered include bloodborne pathogens, safety in the home environment, safe patient handling, communication skills, hospice care, infection control, food preparation safety and hygiene, skin and personal care, emergency procedures, and more.  

Tuition for this course costs $974 if you pay monthly or $749 if you pay in full. While this is more expensive than many other HHA courses, this program is also more thorough than most. 

All Ashworth College graduates can access career services through the Ashworth College Central Network, which offers resume-writing tips, professional development advice, and more.

Ashworth College discloses that its HHA classes do not meet the state education requirements for several states, including California, Indiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, and Washington, D.C. Students will also be responsible for independently pursuing and completing the federally required 16 hours of in-person skills training to meet Medicare requirements.

The America Caregiver Association is the national accrediting body for caregivers and it offers its own courses so you can become certified as a caregiver and associate yourself with the governing body for the profession. 

The ACA offers several courses, but aspiring business owners should select the Caregiver Business Bundle for $179, which will establish you as an independent care provider in the ACA’s National Caregiver Registry (NCR).

In total, you’ll complete 120 hours of classroom instruction, but you'll need to find another provider for the federally mandated 16 hours of hands-on learning. In addition to the online courses, you’ll also receive the “Start Your Own Caregiver Service Business Guide,” which provides practical advice for starting your caregiving business. 

Topics covered include residents’ rights; nutrition, hydration, and food services; vital signs; medication distribution; skin care; oral hygiene; grooming and bathing; assisting residents with activities of daily living; risk management; fall prevention; and other critical skills for home health care. 

Also included are a caregiver ID badge and membership with the ACA. You do have to take an exam upon completion of the course to earn your status in the registry, but the exam is open-book and not timed.

Florida-based Southern Technical Institute offers a fast-track for CNAs looking to expand their work into home health care. This home health aide course is completely online with the exception of a two-hour, hands-on clinical exam. If you don’t live in Florida, you must arrange to travel there for the skills examination or request a certified instructor to come to you. If you don’t complete or pass the skills exam, you won’t be awarded your certificate. 

The program costs $239 and covers home health basics, including infection control and prevention, personal care and hygiene, bathing and clothing, food safety, body mechanics, positioning and transferring, and body systems. 

Southern Technical Institute’s program does not meet the federal requirements for Medicare reimbursement unless you are already a certified nursing assistant. If you are not a CNA, this course only awards 40 hours of classroom instruction, enough to work as an HHA in the state of Florida but not through a Medicare-billing HHA agency. You should check your state’s individual requirements for HHAs before enrolling in this course. 

If you are a CNA, however, you will be awarded a 75-hour certificate upon completion of the online program and two-hour skills check.

CareerStep offers the most thorough, intensive home health aide training we could find. With 272 hours of classroom time, this program gives you an added edge over other aspiring HHAs. 

The program could take up to one year to complete, but CareerStep asserts that if you dedicate two hours per day, five days a week, to your studies, you can finish in as little as seven months. 

CareerStep’s home health aide program is pricier than most, with a tuition of $2,799. However, you do get much more instruction than you would with any of the others. This course covers more than the day-to-day skills you need as an HHA, including the health care system as a whole and how HHAs fit into that system. It has an entire module dedicated to finding and maintaining employment, and you’ll learn how to work with a variety of special needs patients. 

On top of that, the level of detail in the body systems coursework is unbeatable compared to other HHA certification courses. In the CareerStep program, anatomy and physiology are broken up into six separate learning modules, beginning with a module on medical terminology. 

There are no prerequisites to enroll in this program, other than being 18 years old and having a high school diploma. While CareerStep doesn’t offer or accept financial aid, it does offer payment plans through Affirm and PayPal Credit.

Cornerstone Healthcare Training offers two home health aide courses: one catered to future HHAs who want to work through an agency or as an independent provider, and one catered to future HHAs who want to work in an assisted living facility. 

Cornerstone’s assisted living specialty HHA training is unique in that it specifically focuses on additional skills students will need in a group or multi-family living situation. In addition to the basic training needed to work as an HHA, including body systems, medication distribution, infection control, and more, you’ll learn skills and knowledge needed to care for people with conditions commonly found in assisted living homes, specifically mental illnesses and dementia.

Cornerstone also offers individual courses for students pursuing additional knowledge in specialty areas or continuing education credits to maintain their certification. For example, if you also want to open up the opportunity to work as an independent provider or through a home health agency, you can separately purchase the nurse delegation courses offered by Cornerstone. This will prepare you to complete nurse-delegated tasks in a variety of settings.

The assisted living home health aide course consists of 75 hours of online learning and concludes with a virtually proctored online exam. Some of the classes in the course are scheduled live-online classes, which means you’ll need to attend lectures at scheduled times. 

Tuition for the home health aide certification program is $664, and there is an additional cost if you want to take other specialty classes on the side.