Is Enough Being Done for Caregivers?
As you can probably guess, the answer is no. It’s true that some initiatives are delivering minor improvements:
Points to be noted
- Medicare funding for family care.
- Progressive health insurance coverage.
- Access to community services.
- Medicaid Family Care support.
- VA Caregiver Support.
- Family Leave Policy.
- Caregiver Coalitions.
Unfortunately, these are only delivering limited results — there isn’t currently a large-scale, macroeconomic effort to deal with institutional shifts and these endemic issues. The traditional and current focus of caregiving solutions is on medically related support for our aging population with disabilities. The impact on corporate employers and workers is not on the radar screen. With the exponential increase in care needs, the number of distracted workers has become a critical mass, creating billions of dollars in care-related waste. Corporations face an increasingly fragile workforce, as a caring employee’s demands spillover to the larger team. Dual employment is fast becoming a national labor and economic threat.
What is the ultimate aim of a better caregiving infrastructure?
If we want to improve the role of the caregiver, we need to establish a work-life-care vision.
- We should focus on technology that drives tangible healthcare improvements, not just technology for technology’s sake.
- Technology should be an enabler to caregivers, resulting in deeper, more powerful connections to the elder they are caring for, and professional healthcare providers.
- Technology should focus on making employees’ caregiving roles simpler, installing integrated communications solutions so that employees can minimize on and off the job disruptions with higher work and care outcomes, for less cost.
- Our healthcare system should aim to be pioneers, not afraid to take the total lives of caregivers seriously and give them the job continuity and opportunities for loving relationships that they need.
- Employers must have a reliable and present workforce. The caregiving role must be defined with boundaries between work and care carefully scripted. Workforce management must include facts to adequately plan productivity and ensure motivation.
- We should expand this vision beyond the US — an aging population is a global issue, and other countries will have plenty to learn, and plenty to teach us.
These are lofty aims and goals, but we must meet them to solve this problem. A shared vision and a reframing of the burdens for businesses and individuals is imperative to the success of the labor market, especially for caregivers.
How can we all work together to create a better ecosystem for business?
Here’s our view of the major initiatives all organizations need to meet to get to where we need to be, so we can create a smart business caregiving ecosystem that allows employees to meet both their paid work and unpaid caregiving commitments:
List of Important Points
- In addition defining consumer and institutional needs including corporate, employee, caregiving, medical, non-medical perspectives.
- However, size of the population requiring ageing and long-term disabilities caregiving, the essential formal and informal care labour Commit to addressing businesses labour market success and installing institutional working and caregiving infrastructure, not merely personal, informal family care tools and programs.
- So that all organizations can attract, manage and sustain a highly skilled and committed workforce.
- Moreover formally define the health-related and non-medical care obligations of healthcare organizations, unpaid caregivers, businesses, community organizations, and national agencies.
- Provide guidance to inventors of connected, work, life and care platforms across healthcare and a digital health infrastructure including corporations as key consumers of institutional products and services.
Define what a successful resource allocation would be to support the elder and long-term care needs of people with disabilities. - While the transition labour market, business workforce, and individuals towards a more consumer working and caregiving-centred approach.
- Institutionalize government policy supporting equitable treatment of employees in areas such as long-term compensation and benefits outcomes.
- However, job and career continuity, worker’s options for workplace mobility and flexibility reaching all employees inclusive of informal, unpaid, employed caregivers.
- Build a modern employment and care policy. Resolve Legal Issues that are increasing corporate financial liabilities and inhibit the ability of corporations.
- To achieve workforce management including and employees’ success.
Others
Beyond that, we should build a properly-qualified, adequately-paid certified home or community care labor market. Moreover, this market should use technology to improve quality of care. Eliminate administrative burdens. In addition, automate many of the daily tasks that currently are estimated to consume over 25 hours per week.
This will all help to eliminate billions of dollars in waste and lost productivity, due to dual employment. Moreover typically unintentional unfair treatment of people in personal family care roles, and associated litigation due to issues with care.
Also, read about the role has the healthcare, insurance, government, and caregiving provider industry played
