Tag: Caregivers

Advocacy Alert: Budget Amendment to Support Home Care Workforce

MA-State-HouseWhile demand for home based health and supportive care continues to grow in Massachusetts, the home care industry struggles to recruit and retain essential front line caregivers. New data collected last fall through a survey of home care agencies that contract with the state’s Aging Service Access Points (ASAPs) found that on average 25% of a home care agency’s direct care workforce changes every three months leading to intense instability within the organization.

Please click the link below to write or call your Representatives urging them to sign onto Representative Aaron Vega’s amendment #148 which begins to address the underlying causes for the growing home care worker shortage in Massachusetts and takes steps to assure that their will be workers to meet the demand.

Take Action Here

Massachusetts has been successful at rebalancing the long-term care system, and appropriately diverting consumers from nursing facilities to community care. Between FY12 and FY16, MassHealth has experienced a -5.8% reduction in annual bed days. The movement of care from nursing homes to the community has not been been met with the necessary reinvestments in workforce to ensure the workforce is available to support consumers in need of services. MassHealth has not raised the rate of reimbursement for a home health aide in almost a decade.

Return to www.thinkhomecare.org.

Introducing the Caregiver Video Resource Center

Working with families is an integral part of home care agencies do. Unlike most other forms of healthcare, their work is done in their clients’ residences and often alongside the 65,000,000 family members, friends, and neighbors who help care for an elderly or disabled person at home.

To help care providers understand what an agency can do for their loved one, the Alliance has produced a series of short, instructional videos with ElderCareSKILLS.org. The videos feature a variety of home health professionals including nurses, therapists, owners, and home care aides answering the most common questions families ask.

Each Monday, we will feature a new video here on the newsfeed.  In the first, Geoffrey Abraskin, PT, DPT of Amedisys Home Health discusses the basics of choosing a home care agency:

There are currently nine videos available both at www.thinkhomecare.org/videos, and on the Alliance’s YouTube channel, with additional ones planned.  You can also subscribe to  ElderCareSKILLS to access these and hundreds of additional videos designed for family caregivers.

Return to www.thinkhomecare.org.

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