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Home care agencies are often tasked with helping seniors keep up with their activities of daily living (ADLs). But in recent years, a number of specialized training topics have become the key focus of providers looking to strengthen the type of care they’re delivering.
One of these topics is Alzheimer’s disease and dementia training for caregivers, Linda Leekley, chief clinical officer at Idaho-based research and education firm Home Care Pulse, told Home Health Care News.
“We offer a number of specialty programs, and the most requested one is on Alzheimer’s disease,” she said. “It’s no surprise that it would continue to be No. 1.”
The continual uptick in the number of Americans living with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia has inspired more home care providers to launch specialized services lines focused on memory care and disease-specific needs.
And from a business perspective, it makes sense that home care agencies focused on older adults would train their caregivers to serve individuals living with dementia, as seniors have been severely impacted.
Nationally, there are more than 5 million people aged 65 and older living with Alzheimer’s disease — a number that is estimated to grow by roughly 14 million by 2025, according to statistics from the Alzheimer’s Association.
Specialized training for conditions such as dementia help caregivers rise to the level of health interventionist, Helen Adeosun, founder and CEO of CareAcademy, told HHCN.
“It’s not just about personal skills anymore or personal care,” she said. “It’s also about training someone to manage a persisting condition of the patient in the home care setting. There’s a whole master plan that has been revealed by California, for instance, for [community health workers] to really think about how we expand the competencies of direct care workers. I think the home care industry is going to be a direct beneficiary of that.”
CareAcademy is a Boston-based training platform for home care professionals. The company currently serves roughly 1,000 home care clients and locations.
Another training trend among home care agencies has to do with behavioral health. This is, no doubt, a result of the public health emergency, according to Leekley.
“Behavioral health is what administrators are looking for, given the couple of years that we’ve lived through — the social isolation, the depression and the grief that has come to the forefront,” she said.
Indeed, social isolation or loneliness can be prevalent among the senior population, and while the demand for behavioral health services had been on the rise prior to the COVID-19 emergency, the pandemic worsened conditions for many people.
Roughly, 52% of behavioral health organizations have seen a spike in the demand for their services since the onset of the public health emergency, according to a survey from the National Council for Behavioral Health.
Another COVID-19 inspired training trend is the increase in infection-control training aimed at curbing the spread of germs and infectious diseases in health care settings, including the home.
While home health and other health care settings have always had to navigate infection control on an official level, this hasn’t been the case for their non-medical home care counterparts. The public health emergency caused home care providers to be even more aware of safety precautions.
“If an agency can say to clients, family members or referral sources, ‘All of our caregivers and infection-control specialists, they’ve completed a curriculum,’ that can be really powerful,” Leekley said.
In general, the COVID-19 emergency continues to be top of mind when home care leaders are thinking of new training topics for caregivers within their organizations.
“Administrators and owners are trying to really figure out in real-time, ‘How do I account for COVID moving forward within the agency?’” Adeosun said. “‘Am I in compliance with all of the shifts that have happened because of COVID?’ Just acknowledging COVID and its impacts on the home care industry.”
Additionally, in the wake of protests against police violence toward Black Americans following the murder of George Floyd and the surge in anti-Asian hate crimes across the U.S., some home care agencies have taken steps to become more culturally competent.
“Given the Black Lives Matter movement, there is a lot of awareness, across employers as well as workers, in terms of understanding the needs of different communities,” Adeosun said. “We’re noticing specifically that states are requiring and mandating cultural competency training as just part and parcel of working within home care.”
In light of the COVID-19 emergency, more eyes than ever are on the home care industry.
With this in mind, training will continue to serve as a major tool for providers looking to prove the value of their agencies.
“Ultimately the home care industry is going to be tied to the health of the most vulnerable communities and those who are aging in place,” Adeosun said. “A lot of our agencies are utilizing training for Alzheimer and dementia, as a key differentiator, because I think it’s a quality standard to have that level of specialization.”
Similarly, Leekley believes that home care agencies that have trained their caregivers to take on specialized services have beefed up their marketing efforts.
“In addition to providing great training and serving as a potential career ladder for caregivers, when they focus on a particular area and develop a caregiver specialist in that area, it can be used as a great marketing tool with clients, family members and referral sources,” she said.
Looking ahead, specialized training may open more doors for home care when it comes to relationships with payers and other providers.
“I think increasingly, you’re going to have much more tied-in systems, especially with payers and providers within the community who are going to be looking for agencies that have a level of training standardization around some of the conditions that most impact their patient population,” Adeosun said.
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