America’s Home Care Infrastructure Is Crumbling. Here’s How to Fix It.

Home Health Care News
By Robert Holly
 
As part of his administration’s recently unveiled American Jobs Plan, President Joe Biden wants to set aside $400 billion to better support the nation’s home-based care system.
 
While specifics still need to be worked out, a large chunk of that funding would be used to improve the wages of home health aides and other caregivers who work in the home.

That, in theory, would allow in-home care providers to more effectively recruit and retain workers, which would then ultimately save the U.S. health care system money by keeping patients in the lowest-cost setting.
 
“The American Jobs Plan is going to help in big ways,” Biden said during a March 31 speech in Pittsburgh. “It’s going to extend access to quality, affordable home- or community-based care. Think of expanded vital services like programs for seniors. Or think of home care workers going into homes of seniors and people with disabilities, cooking meals, helping them get around their homes and helping them be able to live more independently.”
 
For a variety of reasons, retention is particularly difficult in both the home health and home care industries. 
 
For minimum-wage, entry-level positions in home care, for example, potential caregivers often end up poached by $15 an hour jobs in the retail or restaurant business. In home health care, top nurses frequently leave their agencies for higher-paying hospital jobs. . .

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