By Geralyn Magan
The LTSS Center recommends that you put these 5 articles on your reading list for February.
HOW TO RETAIN HOME CARE STAFF
“Next to family members, in-home care workers are the primary, hands-on providers of care, particularly long-term services and supports (LTSS), to older adults and people with disabilities or chronic conditions—in the United States and across the world.”
That’s how Robyn Stone, co-director of the LTSS Center, began her recent 30-minute conversation with Home Health Care News for its “Disrupt” podcast.
“These folks are what we call the ‘eyes and the ears’ of the health and LTSS systems,” said Stone about home care aides. “They have very strong relationships with the people that they care for. They may be the only person in the home. Often, it’s the home care worker who’s actually not only understanding the client, but really understanding the environment in which that client lives. These care professionals … are essential in terms of improving quality of care and quality of life.”
During her interview with writer Robert Holly, Stone described the home care workforce and how it fits into health care’s future, discussed the role of foreign-born workers in home health care, explored ways to incorporate home care professionals into care planning, and offered strategies for recruitment and retention.
“I actually think that we need to be paying dual attention constantly to recruitment and retention,” said Stone. “I would say that if we paid more attention to retention, we wouldn’t have as many challenges around recruitment.”
Listen to the conversation or read the highlights.
HOW IS AGING LIKE CLIMATE CHANGE?
Author Susan Jacoby used a recent column in The New York Times to suggest that our attitudes about aging are a lot like our attitudes about climate change.
“Like climate change, the aging of America demands serious reconsideration of the way we live,” she writes. “Confronting the issue and its many implications … requires what seems to be the most difficult task for human beings—thinking about the future.”
Jacoby wonders why the Democratic presidential debates have focused on the plight of young people with inadequate insurance coverage but ignored the failure of “Medicare as we now know it” to work for many retirees.
“No single ‘program’ can deal with the intimate, painful problems associated with the growing proportion of old people who experience long but not necessarily healthy lives,” she concludes. “Facing our own fears about what it means to grow old … is the essential psychological shift that all Americans must make before we can meet the deadline to create a better reality for the old and their families.”
AGING IN AMERICA: A BOOK REVIEW
Elderhood, a new book by Louise Aronson, “breathed new life into my somewhat jaded view of the current landscape and potential future of aging in America,” writes Robyn Stone in a recent book review published in Health Affairs.
Aronson makes a compelling case for “recognizing elderhood as a unique stage of life with all of its positive and negative dimensions,” writes Stone. Specifically, Aronson calls for the recruitment and training of physicians and other health care professionals to deal with each stage of the life course: pediatricians for childhood, internists for adulthood, and geriatricians for elderhood.
Stone critiques the book for giving “short shrift “to the importance and value of residential care options in the community, and failing to recognize the role of home care aides in supporting community-based care.
“Despite these minor criticisms, I loved reading this book and recommend it to all health professionals, policy makers, service providers, and researchers involved in the aging enterprise; anyone who has an aging relative; and all of us who are growing older every day,” concludes Stone.
WHEN REFUGEES ENTER THE WORKFORCE
Despite the harrowing circumstances that force refugees to flee their countries, “they come with a range of skills and talents that they simply want to put to use in building a new life for themselves,” writes Adi Gaskell in Forbes. But, too often, those refugees face barriers that prevent them from doing just that.
Gaskell cites research suggesting ways that countries can help refugees become meaningful members of their communities. For example, a Stanford University study found that some refugees had a higher chance than other refugees of settling in their home country, due to factors like education level, knowledge of English, and the location where they settled. Researchers designed an algorithm that used this data to place refugees in locations where they are most likely to be successful. The algorithm increased refugees’ chances of finding a job by 70%, according to estimates.
“Refugees, and migrants more generally, can often be characterized by their immense determination to make something of their lives,” concludes Gaskell. “That desire can be enormously valuable to their host community, and we should be doing far more to remove the hurdles that remain in their way.”
WHERE WILL ALL THE GERIATRICIANS COME FROM?
The federal government estimates that 1 geriatrician can care for 700 patients with complicated medical needs. That means we’ll need 33,200 geriatricians by 2025 to fill the need for care among older Americans. We now have about 7,000 geriatricians, and only half of them practice full time.
Paula Span reports in her recent New York Times column that few medical residents decide to specialize in geriatrics because geriatricians earn a fraction of what anesthesiologists, radiologists, and cardiologists earn. Plus, the field of geriatrics doesn’t have the “glamour or the prospect of medical heroics.” Confusing the picture is a 2009 survey finding that “geriatricians reported higher career satisfaction than most.”
One solution to the shortage, Span writes, may involve using geriatricians as a “small elite work force” who help train other health care professionals—including nurse practitioners, physician assistants, therapists, and pharmacists—to care for older adults.