{"id":100934,"date":"2025-07-29T02:31:16","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T02:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/100934\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T02:31:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T02:31:16","slug":"what-is-the-caregiver-crisis-johns-hopkins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/100934\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is the Caregiver Crisis? | Johns Hopkins"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can you define the caregiver emergency and explain how big of a problem this crisis is?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are 24 states that have been deemed to have a critical emergency when it comes to the availability and the care provided by caregivers across the board. By their own assessment, these states have reached a dire moment where they are relying on existing nursing homes, long-term care facilities, and people caring for their loved ones at home, and the infrastructure is buckling under the increased demand.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a serious problem. There are 53 million unpaid caregivers\u2014people providing care for their loved ones in the home\u2014in America. They provide over $870 billion a year in service to society in terms of caring for these people.<\/p>\n

How did caregiving evolve to where it is today?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a confluence of a few factors. We have an aging population\u2014people are living longer. Traditionally, it was the woman\u2019s role to stay home and care for parents and children. But it is very common now to have two working parents, and as a result, there is not that pool of free labor to care for a population that is living much longer than they did 40 or 50 years ago. For a long time, this care has been absorbed within the homes, but we are at a tipping point where I don\u2019t know that that is going to be an option [to meet the growing demand].<\/p>\n

Is this primarily a crisis of paid or unpaid caregivers?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Both. There are about 5 million paid caregivers; however, their ability to continue being paid at current levels will probably be adversely affected by the $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid.<\/p>\n

Medicaid plays an important role in the care of some of our most vulnerable populations. Sixty-three percent of nursing home residents receive Medicaid funding. The OBBB reduces the available pool of money that these caregivers receive. It limits the number of pilot programs that states can enroll for caregiver stipend programs. It also increases the requirements for hiring and maintaining caregivers at nursing homes and long-term care facilities.<\/p>\n

With these changes, you will see a decrease in both the number of caregivers who can provide care in nursing homes and in the number of eligible residents. If they\u2019re not being cared for by nursing homes or long-term care facilities, they\u2019re coming home, which will require family members to provide additional care. It\u2019s safe to assume that the number of unpaid caregivers will increase.<\/p>\n

What could be done to improve the situation?<\/strong><\/p>\n

This huge workforce is the silent, invisible backbone of a disproportionate amount of care that goes on in the U.S. Because of that, the number of services provided to them are very few. There\u2019s respite care, there are caregiver stipends\u2014but generally those things come through Medicaid-type services. If there are cuts, the respite care, the stipends\u2014they will be first to be eliminated. When those services are taken away from caregivers, and there\u2019s an increased demand for caregiving, you\u2019ll have an increase in burnout among caregivers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019d love to see states implement a caregiver needs assessment. Caregivers need programs that check in on how they\u2019re doing, pilot programs that maintain their stipends and that allow them to take time off by having someplace for their loved ones to go for a predetermined number of days a year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Caregivers deserve a seat at the table in terms of trying to figure out what their needs are and what would help alleviate some of this burden. They provide so much care, the least we can do is provide care for them.<\/p>\n

How many people are eligible for the stipends you mentioned?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A very small number of people. It is a very difficult, time consuming process to go through that requires filling out the forms and having the inspections of your home. For someone who isn\u2019t well versed in the health care system, figuring all that out on top of the demands of caring for their loved ones is an incredible burden.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With more and more people doing this invisible work, shouldn\u2019t we be building the system up, rather than considering further cuts?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There needs to be a systematic approach to this. Eight hundred and eighty billion dollars is a big number. Itrepresents cuts that will make it harder for nursing homes to hire and retain certified nursing assistants and caregivers, and that will make it more difficult for family members to, on a long-term basis, provide for their loved onesby cutting the stipend and by reducing the ability for them to get any type of respite.\u00a0<\/p>\n

All of these things add increased burdens on the system\u2014including what it does to the patient. If a patient is not getting care in a nursing home or a long-term care facility, then they\u2019re going to be increasingly using the emergency room for primary care. That results in delayed diagnoses. It makes recovery\u2014which could have been very focused\u2014protracted over time. I think these cuts are going to be downstream costs that we end up reabsorbing.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Can you define the caregiver emergency and explain how big of a problem this crisis is? There are…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":100935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[1081,10361,7931,210,1141,10667,1142,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-100934","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-aging","9":"tag-caregiving","10":"tag-disability","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-health-care","13":"tag-health-policy","14":"tag-healthcare","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114934178616950932","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}