Home Health Care: Shouldn’t It Be Work Worth Doing?
Home health aides trained to do more — to spot patients’ health problems, to keep track of their pills
and doctors’ appointments and to offer advice on healthy living — could wring billions of dollars in savings from the health care system.
For instance, community health workers doing home visits can help bridge the gap between patients
and doctors — improving rates of immunization, helping manage conditions like high blood pressure and otherwise encouraging healthy behaviors.
Care providers — home health aides, personal care attendants
and certified nursing assistants, in the government’s classification — are expected to be among the nation’s fastest-growing occupations.
Carol Raphael, former chief executive of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, the largest home health agency in the United States, told Professor Osterman
that when the association tried to expand the role of home-care aides, the “nurses went bonkers
They could also help manage the transition out of a hospital, ensuring
that patients took their medication and followed up with the doctor, to prevent them from having a relapse or ending up in a nursing home.
Better-trained aides could help patients manage chronic conditions like obesity and diabetes.
But perhaps the most important barrier is the government’s budget: Medicaid — funded by federal
and state governments — picks up more than half the tab for the $300 billion or so spent every year on long-term care.
