Aging services providers are holding their collective breath as Congress moves toward a vote on the budget reconciliation package, which could designate massive amounts of money to home- and community-based services.
And those funds are more than needed, a group of leaders said during a Tuesday press conference hosted by the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization LeadingAge.
“This is the most important moment in decades for older Americans and their families,” Katie Smith Sloan, the president and CEO of LeadingAge, said during the press conference. “Unless Congress acts now and begins making meaningful changes to strengthen the infrastructure of care and services, the needs of older adults could overwhelm our country’s capacity to provide quality care.”
Sloan was joined by her colleague, George Linial, the president and CEO of LeadingAge Texas.
Other participants included Carol Silver-Elliott, the president and CEO of Rockleigh, New Jersey-based Jewish Home Family. David Totaro, the chief government affairs officer of the Moorestown, New Jersey-based Bayada Home Health Care, also joined.
All of the provider representatives were nonprofit organizations. LeadingAge itself represents about 5,000 nonprofit aging services providers across the country.
The home-based care leaders detailed why President Joe Biden’s $400 billion pledge to home- and community-based services was of dire need, and how it could help solve an exacerbating senior care crisis in the U.S. Others also expressed the need for affordable seniors housing and the desire for an expansion of Medicaid reimbursement.
“The $400 billion in federal relief for home- and community-based services would be a huge game changer for millions of older adults who need personal help to remain at home,” Totaro said. “The COVID pandemic has taught us that home care is the preferred care for seniors and the elderly, and it’s also the most cost-efficient care. So if the time to act is not now, then when is it?”
Bayada provides home health, hospice and personal care services through its 28,000 nurses, home health aides, therapists and social workers. Its network includes 350 locations in 22 states, with additional locations in Canada, Germany, India and four other countries.
More than half of Americans will need formal long-term care and services as they age, according to LeadingAge. Right now, too many of those seniors are either unable to pay for — or access — that care.
To make matters worse, the staffing crisis in home-based care is bad enough that providers are having to turn away needy patients.
“The workforce shortage is not a new crisis,” Totaro said. “It’s been decades in the making. However, from the beginning of the pandemic until now, Bayada has seen an unprecedented increase in the caregiver staffing shortage in New Jersey.”
The staffing shortage that Bayada has experienced of late is unprecedented, Totaro said.
Specifically, it has had to deny service to approximately 50% of all new case referrals due to a lack of staffing. That has not improved, even as the pandemic has eased.
“Our denied referrals have increased from half of all new cases to a record 64% in the tri-state area of Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey, which is our largest coverage area,” he said. “We today are declining nearly two out of every three new home care cases due to a shortage of available caregivers.”
Without funding from the government to improve wages, training and recruiting and retention efforts, the fear is that the U.S. will be facing a shortage of millions of caregivers by the end of the decade, and that it will be unable to compete with much larger players entering the home-based care arena.
“Congress needs to allocate every dollar it can to home- and community-based service providers,” Totaro said. “So we can compete with the likes of Amazon, Walmart … and so many others. So that we aren’t denying two out of every three who need our care in this the richest country in the world.”
House Democrats advanced a $3.5 trillion budget resolution and $1 trillion infrastructure bill on Aug. 24. Party leaders hope to finish work on a spending bill by Oct. 1, according to NPR.
Other aging services leaders who participated during the LeadingAge press conference included Tom Egan, the president and CEO of Phoenix-based Foundation for Senior Living, and Jasmine Borrego, the president of Los Angeles-based TELACU Residential Management.
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