By Stephen Tweed

What can our industry do to attract enough new direct care workers and home care nurses to meet the growing needs of an aging population?

A workforce task force of members of the Home Care Association of America and The National Association for Home Care and Hospice have been working for months on a study of the issues around the workforce and coming up with some tangible solutions.

The report was just published on March 28, 2023. 

The group identified four key challenges to finding enough caregivers:

• Medicaid Reimbursement rates have not kept up with the cost of providing care.
• A dramatic slowdown in the flow of legal immigrants into the US.
• Direct Care Workers who won’t accept promotions or full time work in fear of losing their state benefits such as health care and food coupons.
• Turnover rates with the first year of hire that are up to 64%

Based on their research, the task force proposed some specific, pragmatic recommendations:

• Make on-boarding easier and faster.
• Create peer mentoring programs.
• Replace weekly or bi-weekly pay with daily pay.
• Model a new immigration policy that provides portal for qualified foreign-born individuals

We appreciate the work done by HCAOA and NAHC to address this broad workforce shortage.  We encourage you to become a member of HCAOA or NAHC and join a local chapter or state association.

You can download a copy of the full report at:  https://www.hcaoa.org/workforceaction.html