Home Care Industry Will Encounter 'Care Gap' Soon

Main Category: Caregivers / Homecare
Also Included In: Seniors / Aging
Article Date: 10 Jul 2007 - 19:00 PDT

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As baby boomers "begin encountering the frailties of old age, the nation will face a widening 'care gap' that experts fear will compromise the quality of home care and force people into nursing homes too soon," the Dallas Morning News reports. The U.S., which today has about one million home care aides, will need as many as one million additional workers by 2017 and as many as three million more by 2030, according to experts. The growth in demand will come from the age-65-and-over population doubling in the next 25 years, in addition to a preference for receiving care at home instead of in nursing homes, according to the Morning News.

The labor market for home health care workers is not likely to increase because "the women who typically went to work as caregivers now have better-paying, less demanding options in other fields," the Morning News reports. Low wages and benefits, long hours and lack of training also prevent more people from entering the field. On average, home health care workers in 2005 made $17,710. The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that home health care workers do not qualify for minimum wage overtime.

Steven Dawson, president of the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute, said, "If we paid these people a livable wage, offered them health insurance, trained them better and listened to them, we'd solve this 'workforce crisis' in months. But we can't do that as long as our policymakers treat them as invisible" (Moos, Dallas Morning News, 7/4).

Opinion Piece
"The new Democratic Congress needs to restore the priority of home health care for senior citizens," Edward Koch, former New York City mayor and former member of Congress, and Robert Weiner, a former chief of staff of the House Committee on Aging and former legislative assistant to Koch, write in a Long Island Newsday opinion piece. According to Koch and Weiner, Medicare home health care spending since 2000 has been cut by 25% from $14 billion to $10.5 billion, and it will face additional cuts in President Bush's proposed fiscal year 2008 budget, "which calls for an 'inflation freeze' that would slash $410 million in fiscal 2008 and $9.68 billion over five years."

Meanwhile, spending for nursing home care has increased from $13.6 billion to $15.7 billion since 2000, even though home care "is far cheaper" and offers a "higher quality of life" than nursing home care, Koch and Weiner write. The reason Congress does not prioritize home-based services is that the home care industry -- which generally is composed of small health employment agencies -- does not "have nearly the lobbying power of big institutions like the nursing home industry and the hospitals," according to Koch and Weiner (Koch/Weiner, Long Island Newsday, 7/6).

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