Agencies are having a difficult time finding caregivers for the patients who want them. HealthLeaders talked to one expert about solutions.
The demand for home care services has grown exponentially in the aftermath of elderly patients recovering from the pandemic. Yet due to the workforce shortage, agencies are struggling to find caregivers for the clients who want them.
With 20% of the nation's population anticipated to be over the age of 65 by 2030, home care and other aging services are unprepared to meet the steadily growing demand for geriatric medical needs.
Dr. Michael Apkon, a member of the board of directors for Homecare Hub, an organization that innovates in home care and housing solutions, spoke to HealthLeaders about workforce solutions for home care. Apkon is a pediatrician and the former CEO at Tufts Medical Center in Boston.
"Not only are we in the peak of the baby boomer aging wave, but we also began to have a lot more people that needed some sort of post-acute care setting as they were recovering from COVID," he explained.
"Add on to the factors that … people didn't want to come to the hospital—they wanted alternatives—and hospitals needed to find alternatives to their inpatient beds so they could preserve space for those patients [who] needed it."
Healthcare leaders need to think about new care models to address workforce challenges, Apkon said, including ways to use staff more efficiently and embrace technological innovations.
"[V]irtual nursing that augments in-person care at the bedside, nurses with remote patient monitoring, centralized command centers where nurses can intervene virtually into a patient's room or with the rest of the care team," he explained. "I think those kinds of solutions can also be helpful in addressing some of these issues."
Apkon said that a "much broader, systems-oriented approach to thinking about the healthcare ecosystem" is needed.
"Things like virtual or augmented reality that can create experiences that help people preserve social connections when they're isolated and at home with different kinds of care needs, or to be able to have a range of experiences that might help them clinically," Apkon said. "I think those things could be important over the next five to ten years as the industry develops further."
“Not only are we in the peak of the baby boomer aging wave, but we also began to have a lot more people that needed some sort of post-acute care setting as they were recovering from COVID.”
Dr. Michael Apkon
Jasmyne Ray is the revenue cycle editor at HealthLeaders.