By Cleveland Senior Advisor Care Team · August 11, 2026
Medina County sits outside Greater Cleveland RTA, runs its own transit system, and recently moved its adult protective services intake. Here is who actually covers the county, what is verified locally, and which numbers to call.
Medina County does not run on Cleveland's phone numbers
Medina County sits southwest of Cleveland, and families there usually start their search by reading advice written for Cuyahoga County. Most of it is wrong in small ways that cost weeks. The county had an estimated 185,025 residents as of July 1, 2025, with roughly 22.3 percent age 65 and older, which works out to about 41,000 seniors and 9,966 veterans, per Census Bureau QuickFacts. That is a substantial older population served by a much smaller set of local institutions than Cleveland's.
The practical problem is that nearly every regional contact a Cleveland family would reach for is either different in Medina County or routes somewhere unexpected. The transit authority is different. The adult protective services intake is different, and it moved between agencies. The Meals on Wheels operator that covers a broad swath of Northeast Ohio does not list Medina in its service area at all.
What follows is the county-specific version: who covers Medina, who does not, and which numbers to call. Every claim here is checked against the agency's own materials. Where no figure exists, we say so rather than estimate one.
Which agencies actually cover Medina County
Medina is served by the Western Reserve Area Agency on Aging (PSA 10A), which also covers Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake and Lorain. It is not served by Direction Home Akron Canton, which handles Summit and Portage. This matters more here than almost anywhere else in the region, because Medina borders Summit County and a family in Wadsworth is physically closer to Akron than to downtown Cleveland. Calling the Akron agency because it feels closer will get you routed back.
The same split governs the ombudsman. Medina falls under Region 10A, operated by the Long-Term Care Ombudsman of Cleveland, at 1-800-365-3112, based at 8111 Rockside Rd., Suite 250, Valley View. The ombudsman service is free and confidential, and it advocates for residents of both nursing homes and residential care facilities on care quality, residents' rights, and improper transfer or discharge. Summit and Portage use Region 10B instead. More on how that office works is on our ombudsman and complaints page.
MyCare Ohio's Northeast region does include Medina. But Ohio Medicaid has been restructuring that program under the name Next Generation MyCare, with a first phase of counties transitioning effective January 1, 2026, so confirm current plan status directly with Ohio Medicaid rather than relying on any secondary summary, this one included.
Reporting elder abuse in Medina County: the program moved, the number did not
This one trips up families and a fair number of professionals. Ohio runs adult protective services county by county rather than through a single statewide hotline, and in most counties that means the county Job and Family Services agency runs APS directly. Medina changed that arrangement.
Medina County's APS program moved out of Medina County Job and Family Services and now operates under the umbrella of the Medina County Office for Older Adults, which took the program on in 2021. But Medina County Job and Family Services still takes the reporting calls. Both agencies state this on their own websites, which is the only reason we are comfortable publishing it.
So the number to call during business hours is (330) 661-0800. For an after-hours report, contact the Medina County Sheriff's department at (330) 725-6631, and they will page the on-call caseworker. If someone faces immediate risk of serious harm, call 911 first. If the concern involves a licensed nursing home or residential care facility, report it to the Ohio Department of Health complaint line at 1-800-342-0553 as well, because facility-based care is a licensing matter and ODH is the licensing authority.
Ohio's statewide backup line, 855-644-6277, does exist and does work. For an active safety concern, a direct call to the county is usually faster.
The supply picture is concentrated in one town
Every senior living community we have verified in Medina County sits in the city of Medina itself. Not Brunswick, which is the county's largest city by population. Not Wadsworth. That is a statement about our own verification standard as much as about the market, and we would rather say it plainly than pad a directory with listings we have not confirmed against an operator's own website.
The four verified listings: StoryPoint Medina East at 122 Medina Road offers independent living and assisted living, with no dedicated memory care neighborhood. StoryPoint Medina West at 635 North Huntington Street offers independent living, assisted living and memory care. The difference between those two sister communities is the single most important thing to get right if dementia is part of your family's picture. Western Reserve Masonic Community at 4931 Nettleton Road is the county's only continuing care retirement community, on a 229-acre campus. Reserve Care Hospice Center - Medina at 5075 Windfall Road provides inpatient hospice; that organization operated as Hospice of the Western Reserve until a recent rebrand, and the older name is still in wide local use, so do not assume you have found two different providers.
The practical consequence is that a Medina County family with a strong preference for staying close to home has a genuinely narrower set of options than a Cuyahoga family, and should plan from the start to widen the search into Summit County or southern Cuyahoga if the first two or three do not fit. Our Medina County page and the full directory are the place to start.
Getting there without RTA
Greater Cleveland RTA does not serve Medina County. Families who assume the regional bus and paratransit network extends south and west are building a plan around a service that is not there.
What exists instead is Medina County Public Transit, at (330) 723-9670, running routes in Medina, Brunswick and Wadsworth along with on-demand scheduling. For residents 60 and older, the enrollment path runs through the Medina County Office for Older Adults at 330-723-9514, which subsidizes many trips using Title III Older Americans Act funding. Riders under 60 with low incomes are directed to Medina County Job and Family Services at 330-722-9283 instead.
Transportation deserves more weight in a Medina County decision than it would in Lakewood or Shaker Heights. If a parent stops driving, the gap between a community sitting on a transit route and one on a rural road outside Wadsworth is the gap between keeping routine medical appointments and quietly losing them. Ask every community you tour how residents without cars actually get to a cardiologist.
One more coverage gap worth checking rather than assuming: VANTAGE Aging's Meals on Wheels of Northeast Ohio, which serves Summit and Portage among other counties, does not currently list Medina County in its service area. Ask the Office for Older Adults what the local meal program is.
What it costs, and what nobody publishes
There is no published cost figure for senior care in Medina County. None. CareScout, which runs the survey most cost articles quietly rely on, publishes national and state median tables and does not break results out by county. Anyone quoting you a precise Medina County number is estimating and generally not telling you so.
The Ohio statewide medians from the 2025 CareScout Cost of Care Survey are $6,103 a month for an assisted living community, $9,186 for a semi-private nursing home room, $10,389 for a private nursing home room, and $1,798 a month for adult day health care. Use these for orientation. Do not use them as a quote, and do not assume Medina tracks the state median in either direction.
Memory care is a worse information environment. CareScout does not survey memory care as a separate category, so no authoritative memory care median exists for Ohio at all. Every memory care price you find online is somebody's estimate wearing the costume of data. We explain that gap further on our memory care cost page.
The only number that actually matters is the all-in monthly cost a specific community will put in writing for your parent at their assessed care level, plus what triggers the next care level and what that level costs. Ask for three years of rate increase history while you are at it. See what senior care costs and how families pay.
Two Ohio licensing facts to carry onto every tour
Ohio issues a single Residential Care Facility license under OAC 3701-16, and it covers nearly all assisted living and memory care communities in the state. There are no tiers. If you have read about Type A and Type B assisted living licenses, that is Texas, and none of it applies in Medina County. Our RCF licensing page covers what the license does and does not tell you.
Memory care in Ohio is a written disclosure requirement, not a state certification. Under OAC 3701-16-07(F)(5), a facility operating a special care unit must give you a written disclosure before admission or on request, covering the unit's admission and discharge criteria, staffing and staff dementia training, activities programming, any additional costs, and the physical design of the unit. No state agency inspects and scores that document. Ask for it, read it in full, and press on anything written vaguely. See the memory care disclosure page.
Residential care facilities may provide limited skilled nursing care, but it is capped at 120 days in any 12-month period unless extended by written agreement among the facility, the resident and the resident's physician under OAC 3701-16-02(D). Ask each community what happens when a resident approaches that cap, and get the answer in writing.
Where to start this week
Call Western Reserve Area Agency on Aging for long-term care options counseling, and if Medicaid may eventually be involved, ask for a waiver assessment. The Assisted Living Waiver pays for care services delivered inside a licensed RCF but never for room and board, and local capacity varies. Our Assisted Living Waiver page explains what it does and does not cover.
Call the Medina County Office for Older Adults at 330-723-9514 about transportation registration and meals, ideally before you need either. Enrollment takes time that a crisis will not give you.
If a hospital stay is the trigger, Cleveland Clinic Medina Hospital at 1000 E. Washington St. in Medina, 330-725-1000, runs a 24-hour emergency department and is the county's main acute care site. Ask the case manager for the discharge plan in writing and ask specifically which local communities have an open bed at your parent's care level, not which ones are on a printed list.
Then tour with the licensing questions above in hand. In a county with four verified communities, the quality of your questions matters more than the length of your list.
