Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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Why are Care Providers for Clients So Hard to Find ?

September 8, 2021

Home care aides all over the US are AWOL. Care Management, home care agencies, nursing homes are severely understaffed and cannot find enough caregivers to staff cases for shifts. Why?

Disorganization of Home Care Industry

Staffing shortages have frustrated the home care and care management industry for

decades, according to Paula Hahn author of the New old Aging blog for the New York Times. . There is no national recruiting or training program for this huge industry.The home care industry has always been a hodgepodge of for-profit companies and chains, nonprofit programs and publicly funded care through Medicaid, all operating under a confusing welter of state and federal regulations, plus an uncharted “gray market” of clients who avoid agencies and hire privately. But Covid-19 has intensified the problem.

“I’ve never heard such frustration over finding workers, and I’ve been doing this for 20 years,” said Vicki Hoak, executive director of the Home Care Association of America, whose 4,000-member agencies collectively employ about 500,000 people. 

Bureau of Labor Predicted this in 2020 -Pre-COVID

This was foreseen and was by the Bureau of Labor statistics. They predicted in 2020 that the long-term care sector would need to fill an additional 6.2 million direct care job openings between 2019 and 2029 as workers leave the field for a new occupation or leave the labor force altogether due to retirement, disability, or some other reasons. Combining these departures and new jobs, they projected a 7.4 million total direct care job openings in the decade ahead 

Mammoth Growth in # of Seniors Who Want to Age

in Place

The bigger problem is the growing need for home care. Each day 10,000 seniors turn 65

in the US and the number of older adults will more than double over the next several decades to top 88 million people and represent over 20 percent of the population by 2050. . The majority want to age in their home and need home care, where today there are not enough home care workers to fill those jobs.

More $ Spent on Home Care than Nursing Homes

2015, was the first time nationally that more money was spent on home care than nursing home care. We’ve seen a culture and financing shift toward home and community-based care.”
Covid -19 now the Delta variant has wreaked more chaos into the home care market. Home care workers are mainly women and had to stay home with their children when school closed down. They were also hot hard by COVID themselves, working with seniors before a vaccine was developed.

Solutions to the National loss of caregivers

There are many other factors  the loss of care providers and great solutions offered by Leading Age a national non profit for aging and home care.

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, ALCA COVID-19 Crisis, Biden's Caregiver Infastucure Paln, Black Entrepreneur, Black Entrepreneur RB, Black Entrepreneur RN, Black Geriatric Care Manager, Black RN, Black Travel RN, care economy, Care Infastructure, Care Infrastructure, caregiver infrastructure, Caregiver living wage, Caregiver low salary, caregiver mental health, CAREGIVER RESOUCES, Caregivers contracting COVId, Covid-19 and GCM SERVICES, Essential Workers deaths, Expanding Medicare to Home Care, GCM COVID 19 Crisis, geriatric care management emergency proceduress, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Home Care Covid Safety, National Caregiver Loss, National Caregiver need, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, PPE and Essential Workers, private duty homecare agency Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, black aging family, black american geriatric care managers, black american social workers, Black Entrepreneurs, Black Nurse Entrepreneurs, Black RN's, Black start-up geriatric care management, Black travel nurses, Bureau of Labor prediction shortagen, care manager, caregiver low wage salary, caregiver training, Careprovider shortage, COVID exposure of caregivers, Covid-19 and caregivers, geriatric care manager, homecare crisis, Homecare Industry, Homecare industry disorganization, Leading Age, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, problem recruiting caregivers, recruiting caregiver, Recruiting caregivers, Solution to National caregiver shortage, unionization of caregivers, US caregiver shortage, Women of color caregivers

Who Benefits from Bidens Caregiver Infrastructure Plan ?

April 19, 2021

Who Benefits from Biden’s Infrastructure Bill addressing Caregivers? Three groups

The first and foremost beneficiaries are paid caregivers who serve older people on Medicaid. The problem is they are not paid enough. These caregivers make an average of about 11.50 an hour or $23,920.00 a year, a figure below the poverty line. The goal for the Biden plan is $15.00  an hour which is $31,200 a year. This is above the federal poverty line of 2021 but only if you have 5 people in your family and will in another phase have to go higher.

Biden’s Program Benefits Caregivers Who are Primarily Women of Colorphoto.JPG

Predomitality women and people of color, these caregivers and their families struggle to survive on their present low salaries. In theory, much of the funding for the Biden Plan would be used to improve low-wage caregiving jobs.

Despite this invaluable work, caring mainly for elders and people with disabilities. 1 in 8 of these direct caregivers’ lives in poverty 

 

Why a Caregiver Infrastructure Bill. 

 

This bill repairs the ravaged road to caring for the huge number of elders who need care now and in the future. Why do we need a superhighway to care? The Elderly will grow to

a vast number while caregivers are in decline, leaving a rutted highway that needs major repair- for boomers, elders, retirees, and future older people in the coming to get the care they need 40 years.

Caregivers are hard to recruit because of the low salaries and the pandemic. COVID infected them as they were front-line workers, had to work three jobs to keep financially afloat, and were not in line to get the first shots. So they often became COVID victims and spread it to their own families. The bill will help the salaries of caregivers, which will help rebuild the potholed path to caring for elders now and in the future. The number of Americans ages 65 and older will more than double over the next 40 years, reaching 80 million in 2040. The number of adults ages 85 and older, the group most often needing help with basic personal care, will nearly quadruple between 2000 and 2040.

Why Unionize?

The bill would raise the salary for care providers who are caring for the poorest elders, themselves on Medicaid. It would also give them a right to collectively bargain nationwide through the SEIU. This is why the union needs to be involved. States can randomly lower the $1500.00 an hour plus a union needs to be in place to raise the minimum wage of $15.00 higher in the future to really gets these critical workers out of poverty.

Biden believes Unions Hold up the American Worker

Biden supports unions. They have been decimated over the last three decades. The rejection of the Alabama Amazon union is an example of this.

Not clear yet how the $400 billion would be spent?

Biden’s proposal doesn’t specify how the $400 billion in additional funding would be spent, beyond stating that access to home and community-based care would be expanded and caregivers would receive “a long-overdue raise, stronger benefits and an opportunity to organize or join a union.” The proposal is the second tier of the bill and will be more clearly defined in the next round.

We will look at the next two groups that benefit- senior and aging families -in my blogs in the next few weeks.

JOIN ME FOR MY NEW FREE WEBINAR 

Thursday, May 20th

2 PM- 3:30 PM Pacific Standard Time

Recorded so if you cannot make this will still be sent recording if you do not sign up

 

Successfully Market the safety of your homecare or geriatric care management agency in the Precarious “Semi-Post”- Pandemic Period-When Aging Families Are Still Full of Fear

 

Learn to market the safety of your agency, to overcome hesitation to use homecare as COVID slowly diminishes, vaccination accelerates yet elders are not fully vaccinated, COVID still spikes, variants explode, vaccines are taken off the market, people refuse vaccines, conspiracy theories abound and 8000 American still die each day.

 

Understand how to innovatively sell” trust” in your safe care management services so family caregiver’s & 3rd parties choose you as a safe agency, when family care providers are still hesitant to trust your services because of COVID

 

Learn to Use public relations and marketing to show you are focused on caregiver and care management safety by developed protocols. to  show you do testing, infection control, and procuring the safest personal protective equipment (PPE)

 

 Show you follow the safe new CDC’s leaderships path to safety to overcome the distrust created by the former federal government’s, mixed messaging that left family caregivers confused frustrated, feeling there was no clear path to safety through home care or care management

.

You will learn

 

  • 5 steps to create an e-newsletter with the right copy, to get out the word about your

    safe COVID 19 services

 

  •  

 

  • 10 steps to set up a Zoom webinar to teach local aging agencies and caregivers about your COVID safe services and other local resources to assist caregivers in the community

  • 7 steps to use social media to alert aging family caregivers to the clear path to your

    GCM agency provides safety from the diminishing but still present virus in the US.

 

  • 5 steps to get local media coverage of your COVID -19 safe services, care providers, and general excellent care management and home care products free PR with radio and TV coverage plus pick local newspapers where ads may pay off to sell your COVID Products

 

  • 5 steps to understand how to generate word of mouth customers for your COVID -19 safe services using your continuum of care in your community

  • 10 steps to use the powerful new tool of Video to market your agency’s COVID safety and excellent services as the pandemic diminishes but is still in your community, state, and country

SIGN UP

 

You are invited to a Zoom webinar.
When: May 20, 2021, 02:00 PM Pacific Time (the US and Canada)

REGISTER NOW

 

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Blog, Caregiver Infrastructure bill, Caregiver living wage, Caregiver low salary, caregiver mental health, Caregivers contracting COVId, coaching caregivers, COVID, Covid 19, COVID19 Deaths Essential worker, Essential Workers deaths, Expanding Medicare to Home Care, Families, FOLLOW THE MONEY, FREE WEBINAR, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, Home Based Care, Medicaid Caregivers, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Unionization for caregivers, Woman of color caregivers Tagged With: aging life geriatric care manager, Biden's infrastructure- Caregiver Bill, Caregiver & COVID, caregiver low wage salary, caregiver shortage, caregivers for the elderly, caregivers live in poverty, covid -19 geriatric care manager, improving caregiver wages, Medicaid caregivers, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, problem recruiting caregivers, recruiting caregiver, SEIU and caregivers, unionization of caregivers, Women of color caregivers

What is President Biden’s New Infrastructre Caregiver Plan?

April 14, 2021

President Biden announced the American Jobs Plan, a $2 trillion investment in infrastructure, jobs, and home care. It includes a $400 billion investment to expand access to Medicaid home and community-based services (HCBS)

Why This Plan for Home-Based Care?

Only 15% of U.S. seniors 80 or older receive care at home. In Switzerland, Denmark, Mexico, and Sweden, that figure is above 30%, with numbers even higher in Israel and Lithuania.

Medicaid has slowly evolved over the years, placing a greater emphasis on home- and community-based services. But the ground gained has been relatively minor compared to investments in other settings like nursing homes.

In 1995, Medicaid spent about 18 cents out of every long-term care dollar on HCBS services. Today, that number has reached 57 cents per dollar.

The Scale of the Problem is Mamouth

The number of seniors is projected to grow by more than 40 million, approximately

doubling, by 2050, while the population older than 85 will nearly triple. Unlike most other industrialized nations, the United States does not provide a public long-term-care benefit for all older adults.

Only10-15% of Americans can Afford Private Duty Homecare

Because Medicare does not pay for home care, only the top 10-15 % can afford private duty home care, while in many other nations it is a right and free to all through the government. What Biden’s new plan does is take a giant step in making home care possible a greater number of Americans.

The plan calls for expanding access to and quality of HCBS to help more older adults and people with disabilities live in the community and extending the Money Follows the Person program to help individuals who are in nursing facilities and other institutions return to the community. 

What The Pandemic Has taught us about Aging and Dying

at Home

What the continuing pandemic has painfully taught us is when we are ill- we want to be home in the arms of our family. When we are threatened with or facing death, we do not want want to be in a sterile hospital with only anonymous caring nurses and zoom to comfort us in our last minutes in this world. We want to be at home- in the arms of our family and loving caregivers.

Long before the COVID-19 emergency, health care policy experts have increasingly recognized the value of home-based health care. A recent AARP survey found that three in four adults 50 years and older would prefer to age in their homes and communities. And a growing body of evidence suggests it is less expensive to deliver care in the home.

Indeed, for years we’ve seen hospitalized patients more quickly returning to their homes and communities to heal and recover safely, reducing costs for themselves and the health care system.

The Plague of Isolation on top of the Plague of COVID -in Locked Down Nursing Homes

Home-based care addresses negative health effects of social isolation and loneliness, which drive poorer health outcomes that annually cost billions of excess health care dollars. 

Isolation is also equal to 15 cigarettes each day. Elders in a nursing home during the pandemic were isolated from the families and their fellow residents so much so that despair may have led to the 174000 deaths as of March 2021. 

So Biden has launched a bill the builds the infrastructure of home care for the lower 30% on Medicaid until in America’s future, Medicare and home care for all is reached.

 

Filed Under: Age at home, AGING IN PLACE, American Jobs Plan, Blog, COVID-19 Recover at Home Plan, COVID-19 Safety, Expanding Medicare to Home Care, FOLLOW THE MONEY, geriatric care management emergency proceduress, geriatric care manager, Geriatric Care Managers value, geriatric social worker, Good Death, Home Based Care, home care, Home Care for All, Home From the Hospital, LOSING CLients TO COVID, Monet Follows the Person Program, Quality of Life, quality of life -COVID-19, Quality of Life for elders Tagged With: aging life and geriatric care manager, aging life care management, aging life care start up, aging life geriatric care manager, aging life or geriatric care manager, American Jobs Plan, Biden's Home Care Plan, Biden's Infastructure Bill, Deaths in Nursing Homes, Expanding Home Care, Home and Community Based Care, Home Based Care, home care, Isolation in Nursing Homes, Medicaid & Community Based Care, Medicaid funded Home Care, Medicare for All, Money Flows to the Person, nurse advocates, nurse entrepreneur

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