How Supporting Family Caregivers Can Alleviate the Long-Term Care Crisis
With nearly 700K waitlisted for long-term care in 2023 and shortages in healthcare staffing, companies like Aidaly provide innovative solutions to support family caregivers.
In 2023, nearly 692,000 individuals were on a waitlist to be admitted into a long-term facility1. And get this, these individuals suffer with medical conditions that require lifelong medical attention. One contributing factor to these lengthy long-term care waitlists is the workforce shortage in healthcare. There’s a severe nursing shortage and lack of ancillary staff to support bedside care. The Association of American Medical Colleges projects the primary care physicians shortage will be about 48,000 by 2034. These shortages directly impact the available primary prevention measures to the public.
How Healthcare Policies and Politics Restrict Access to Care
Oh, and quick fact: the key player in this game is called the Center for Medicare Services (CMS). In the United States, CMS creates the policies for the government funded public health insurances. Ironically, the political climate plays a big role in available healthcare services. States have the ability to personalize the access to public insurance resources. Therefore, healthcare policies across states, are in fact, not standardized. States may cap the number of waivers for people enrolled in health and community services, which can result in a very long waiting list for long term facilities1 . As a result, in 2023, it took an average of 36 months for patients to get admitted into a long-term facility1 . Although the average wait time fluctuates each year, politics influence how the resources will be distributed to the public. And truly, I hate talking about politics, but healthcare needs to introspectively reflect on the notion that maybe politics overwhelmingly and inappropriately influenced its clinical operations.
Aging Population and Rise of Chronic Diseases Intensify Need
HealthyPeople2030 predicts by 2060, nearly 25% of the population will be 60 or older. The population is expected to grow to 10 billion by 2058 2 . The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recently published that humankind will be impacted by more frequent and severe diseases as a direct result from climate change3 . Lastly, chronic disease diagnosis is becoming more frequent in younger age groups. In the Early 2000s, the average age to be diagnosed with type two diabetes was 50-54 4. However, last year, the average age to be diagnosed with type two diabetes was 45-49 4. In 2019, nearly 50% of adults aged 18-34 reported having at least one chronic condition with the most prevalent being obesity, depression, and high blood pressure 5. These alarming facts pose one question: what are the solutions to mitigate the challenges currently faced in primary prevention care?
A New Standard for Family Caregiver Support Models
Aidaly is redefining caregiving through an innovative design model for patients needing long-term medical care. Quality resources are provided to the employed caregivers, to ease the challenges lifelong caregiving has. On Aidaly’s home page, 14,3000 caregivers completed a company survey. Nearly 47.6% of the caregivers’ patients were their parents. And, 79.3% of caregivers indicated that they were living with their patient. Nearly 66% of caregivers rated feeling a 3 out 5 on navigating the healthcare system. Political dependent resources directly impact patient care and long-term health outcomes. Family caregivers have to be the priority in patients' treatment plans to assure quality care. Not only is the relationship emotional, it's long lasting.
My goal as the Head of Clinical Care at Aidaly: healthcare will standardize its practices to mirror the Aidaly model of caregiving.
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1Burns, A., & Mohamed, M. (2023, November 28). A look at waiting lists for Medicaid home- and community-based services from 2016 to 2023. KFF. https://www.kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/a-look-at-waiting-lists-for-medicaid-home-and-community-based-services-from-2016-to-2023/
2 Ritchie, H., Rodés-Guirao, L., Mathieu, E., Gerber, M., Ortiz-Ospina, E., Hasell, J., & Roser, M. (2023, July 11). Population growth. Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/population-growth
3Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). Our Risk for Infectious Disease. https://www.cdc.gov/ncezid/pdf/climate-change-and-infectious-diseases-H.pdf
4Le, P., Zhang, L., Misra-Hebert, A. D., Taksler, G. B., Herman, W. H., & Rothberg, M. B. (2020). Trends in age at diagnosis of type 2 diabetes among US adults from 2001 to 2016. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 36(4), 1144–1146. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-020-05767-5
5Watson, K., Carlson, S., & Loustalot, F. (2022, July 28). Chronic conditions among adults aged 18─34 years - United States, 2019. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7130a3.htm#:~:text=In%202019%2C%20more%20than%20one,high%20blood%20pressure%20(10.7%25)
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