The coronavirus is putting pressure on the nation's 3.3 million home health-care workers suffering from shortages and a lack of personal protective equipment, especially in hard-hit states such as New York, New Jersey, Louisiana and Washington.
The nation's 3.3 million home health-care workers are the other front-line heroes in the war against the coronavirus.
Home health workers — comprising nurses, therapists and personal care aides — provide a range of medical and daily-living services to nearly 12 million people, most of them elderly and many chronically ill, disabled, bedridden or coping with Alzheimer's disease and other cognitive issues. And while they are a critical link in fighting this deadly pandemic, they're overlooked in daily briefings by the White House Coronavirus Task Force and ubiquitous media reports.
The private and public entities — such as Home Instead Senior Care and California's In-Home Supportive Services program — that employ in-home caregivers are rapidly responding to the fast-rising demand, even as some workers are forced to stay home to care for their own families, clients cancel visits for fear of becoming infected and the paucity of personal protective equipment lurks.It's a crisis at a tipping point.
"The challenge for our caregivers is making sure they can do their work safely," said Sterling Harders, president of the Service Employees Union International 775, which represents 45,000 health-care workers, including 42,000 in-home personal-care aides, in Washington state and Montana. "They are providing what oftentimes is very intimate care that is difficult to do while social distancing from 6 ft away.
This overlap of fear and precaution is impacting in-home caregiving. "We've been hearing about numerous cases where providers are scrambling to find workers," said Robert Espinoza, vice president of policy at PHI, a Bronx-based nonprofit that advocates for home health workers, though shortages are hard to gauge, because states don't collect enough data on direct care workers.
Amwell works with more than 2,400 hospitals, 240 health systems and 55 health insurance plans, with about 85% of its telehealth services going to in-home patients. "Our in-home volume is so big due to the influx of patients being told by hospitals, health systems and primary care providers not come in, because they don't have the tests or capability to do assessments," Baird said. "In contrast, we have a network of more than 10,000 doctors available on demand.
According to the latest analysis by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, median annual pay was $24,060 in 2018, or $11.57 per hour. Overall employment of home health aides and personal-care aides — as BLS categorizes the workforce — is projected to grow 36% from 2018 to 2028, adding a total of 4,438,700 new jobs over the decade, per the agency.workforce that was already facing shortages
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