Lice Treatment & Lice Removal Service in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Found lice at bath time, or got the nurse's call right before dismissal? A trained LiceDoctors technician will come to you, to a Fishtown rowhome or a stone colonial on the Main Line, so nobody sits scratching in a waiting room. On most days a same-day slot is open, and that includes weekends and holidays.

Every head in the house gets a look, grown-ups included, and whoever has lice is treated before the kit goes back in the car. The bill is for hours worked, not heads counted. Stick with the aftercare routine afterward and our 30-day guarantee has you covered.

Call LiceDoctors Philadelphia: (215) 344-1413 or book online.

Where technicians go, from the River Wards to the Main Line

Every corner of the city

Inside the city limits, visits run in every direction. Technicians come to Center City condos and Rittenhouse walk-ups, to trinities in Queen Village and Society Hill, and to the newer townhouses in Northern Liberties and Graduate Hospital. South Philadelphia means rowhome blocks around East Passyunk, Pennsport, Point Breeze and Grays Ferry. Up the Delaware, the River Wards of Fishtown, Kensington and Port Richmond are covered. So are Fairmount, Brewerytown and the blocks around Temple.

In the Northwest, visits reach Manayunk, Roxborough, East Falls, Germantown, Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill. West Philadelphia, University City, Overbrook, Wynnefield and Southwest Philadelphia are on the list as well, along with the long run of the Northeast off Roosevelt Boulevard: Frankford, Mayfair and Tacony, Fox Chase and Holmesburg, then out to Bustleton, Somerton and Torresdale.

Delaware County and the Main Line

Past the western city line, Upper Darby, Havertown and Yeadon each have a page of their own. We also come to the boroughs and townships around them that do not, such as Drexel Hill, Lansdowne, Springfield, Swarthmore and Media, and out the Main Line to Narberth, Ardmore, Bryn Mawr and Wayne.

Montgomery and Chester counties

In Montgomery County, visits take in Bala Cynwyd, Conshohocken, King of Prussia, Jenkintown and Abington. Cheltenham, which includes Elkins Park, Wyncote and part of Glenside, has its own page. Farther west, families in Chester County towns such as West Chester, Malvern, Exton and Phoenixville book the same way.

Lower Bucks and over the bridges

Up I-95, Bensalem has a page, and visits continue into Bristol, Levittown and Langhorne. For the rest of the county, start with our Bucks County page. Across the Delaware River, families in Cherry Hill, Haddonfield and Collingswood can begin at our South Jersey or Marlton pages.

Getting to you is folded into the hourly rate for any address no more than 30 miles from your technician. Beyond that radius the booking switches to a two-hour minimum, so if your street sits at the far edge of the suburbs, raise it on the phone before you settle on a time.

How a visit works in a rowhome, twin or high-rise

Call the 215 line or use the online form. A same-day slot is usually open, and the schedule stretches from early morning to late night all week long, holidays too, so the visit can start once you are home from work or between Sunday errands.

There is no logo on the car, so the neighbors have no way of telling why a visitor pulled up. On a narrow South Philly street, parking can eat a few minutes; if your block is permit-only or there is a driveway out back, tell the scheduler. In a Center City tower or a University City apartment building, let the front desk know someone is coming up.

Choose the brightest room you have, often the kitchen in a rowhome, and set out a straight-backed chair for whoever goes first. Everyone should be home when things start, since each person is checked and every head that has lice gets treated at that appointment, and a sibling who walks in halfway through only stretches the evening. When you call, say how many people are in the house and whose hair runs long or thick, since that mostly decides how long the visit runs. There is no need to wash the hair or add any product first.

The work is slow and deliberate. After walking you through it, your technician oils the hair, parts it into small sections and drags a professional-grade comb through each one to catch lice and eggs. Then, with the hair dry, your technician returns with fingertips, lifting each leftover nit off its own strand, and finishes with another coat of oil and one last combing. That strand-by-strand stage is what keeps a case from starting over, because a handful of missed eggs is all it takes.

A typical household should block out two and a half to three hours. A lone child with a short cut may be finished in roughly an hour. A tablet, a book or a stack of homework helps the time pass.

Your technician leaves you a follow-up routine built on olive oil and a comb, which deals with any eggs still too small for anyone to see when the visit ended. Thanks to that routine, there is no whole-house scrub and no week of laundry runs down to the basement machine. Nearly every family needs only the one visit. From the moment the front door closes behind your technician, nobody at home can pass lice on.

Who comes to your house, and what parents here say

The technicians covering the city and the Pennsylvania suburbs are Perry, Sarah, Shauna, Natasha and Lauren. Here is what local families mention most in their reviews.

Shauna comes up again and again. Rich (August 2026) called her excellent: "Very knowledgeable and very professional." Jim (July 2026) described her as thorough, friendly and informative, adding, "Extremely personable, especially with younger children." Megan (August 2026) credited Shauna's patience with getting her family through a difficult stretch and said she was grateful Shauna was the one assigned to them.

Other reviewers noticed how smoothly the booking went. Winnie (August 2026) summed it up: "Answered upon first call, scheduled quickly with my availability." Her technician arrived on time and was friendly and knowledgeable. In September 2026, Nicole gave Sarah five stars and called her phenomenal, a real help to the whole family.

All five recent Google reviews are five-star ratings, and between them they mention know-how, punctuality and a good touch with kids, including the youngest ones who find it hardest to sit still. Every Philadelphia technician works the same method, and the 30-day guarantee covers each visit.

School and daycare lice rules in Philadelphia and the suburbs

The School District of Philadelphia

The district's lice guidelines take a calm line. A student found with lice or nits goes back to class until a parent or guardian arrives, which may not be until the end of the school day, and families are not required to come before dismissal. The school notifies the parent as soon as possible, and an information letter goes home with the child.

The guidelines treat live lice, or nits within half an inch of the scalp, as an active case. Whether your child is rechecked before coming back is up to the school nurse. Brothers, sisters and any other children living in the same home get checked as well, while whole classrooms are no longer screened.

Pennsylvania's rule and the suburban districts

Statewide, the Pennsylvania Department of Health points to its regulation, Section 27.71 of Title 28 of the Pennsylvania Code, which requires excluding a student suspected of having live lice but leaves the timing open; nothing in it says the student must leave right away. The department's advice is to send that student home when the school day ends and let them back in right after the first treatment. In line with the American Academy of Pediatrics, it advises against no-nit policies and against checking every head in a school, and it encourages every school to have a head lice policy and procedure.

Suburban districts build their own procedures on that rule. The Unionville-Chadds Ford School District, south of West Chester, repeats the state guidance on its lice page, including the advice against no-nit policies: go home at dismissal, return after the first treatment.

If your children attend Lower Merion, Haverford Township, Upper Darby or Cheltenham schools, ask the school nurse what their building expects. The same goes for the city's many charter schools and for Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Daycare centers and preschools write their own rules, so check with the director before drop-off.

Getting back to class

Let the school nurse know what you found and the date of the visit, and ask whether the school accepts a LiceDoctors visit as the first treatment the state guidance mentions. Should the school or daycare want a note, email the LiceDoctors office; it follows by the next business day. Look through every sibling's hair even if nobody is scratching, because some people with lice never itch, and quietly let the families your child plays with most know to check too. Our guide to getting your child back to school after head lice covers the rest.

Lice season here: camp, the first weeks of school and winter recess

National search data for lice treatment peaks in midsummer, across July and August, and February is the quietest month. The calls ride the same calendar kids do: a new school year, camp, slumber parties and the winter break.

The local school calendar puts dates on that pattern. The School District of Philadelphia's 2026 to 2027 calendar brought grades 1 to 12 back on August 24, with kindergarten starting August 27, and winter recess begins December 23. Those first weeks back, when friends who spent the summer apart are leaning over the same tables and phones again, bring plenty of head-to-head contact.

Summer has its own version: day camps, sleepaway camps and a week down the shore. In the cold months, kids spend more time indoors and closer together. Shared hats and hoods play a much smaller part than heads touching, and lice cannot jump, fly or catch a ride on the family dog, so the answer is checking heads, not fumigating the house.

The weeks around winter recess bring visiting cousins and crowded holiday tables, so a quick head check in early January is a smart habit. Lice also have no off-season. They live on the scalp, where it is warm in January as well as July, so a case can begin in any month of the school year or the summer.

What lice treatment costs in Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania suburbs

Pennsylvania gets the standard LiceDoctors rate, charged for the time your technician spends rather than by the number of heads: $199 for hour one, then $179 an hour, billed in quarter-hour pieces with a one-hour floor. Inside 30 miles the drive costs you nothing; beyond it, expect a two-hour minimum. A Sunday booking adds $20, and the biggest holidays can bring a holiday fee.

So what does a family really pay? Two and a half hours, about what a typical household visit runs, comes to $467.50, and a family of four lands around $480. One short-haired child finished inside the hour is $199.

Since you pay for time, the few minutes it takes to clear a parent's head are the only cost of checking them. The hourly rate is the same in Somerton as in Swarthmore; only the 30-mile rule can change the minimum.

Pay with an HSA or FSA card if you have one; both accounts treat lice removal as an eligible expense, and LiceDoctors takes them. If you plan to ask your insurer for money back, have the diagnosis code included on the receipt and send it in; payment is up to them and is never promised. Email the office for an itemized copy, just as you would for a school note. The pricing page has the details.

Why parents from Fishtown to West Chester choose LiceDoctors

After 20+ years, LiceDoctors has treated over 600,000 clients, and families who stick to the at-home follow-up plan see a 99.6% success rate. Behind the protocol is a dermatologist. LiceDoctors' Lead Medical Advisor, Dr. Madeleine Sowash, MD, FAAD, went over it and gave it her approval.

No pesticides go on your child's scalp, and neither do heat devices or enzyme products; the method is all-natural, chemical-free and safe at any age. That matters in a country where lice that survive the usual drugstore treatments have spread widely. Nationally, across LiceDoctors, the average rating is 4.9 from more than 8,400 reviews.

Should lice reappear in the 30 days after the visit while your family is doing the plan, LiceDoctors re-treats free of charge; the 30-day guarantee spells it out. And there is no ride on the Broad Street Line and no circling for parking with itchy kids in the back seat, because the whole visit happens at your kitchen table.

Call before the next school day

Maybe the nurse called at two, or a scratching fit started during homework. There is no reason to wait for the weekend. Same-day visits are usually open, and before leaving, your technician will have looked at every head in the house and walked you through the next 30 days. Until then, keep the kids from snuggling head to head on the couch.

Call LiceDoctors Philadelphia: (215) 344-1413 or book online.