Being a home health aide or nursing assistant is a physically grueling job with low wages—an average of $10.11 an hour for a job that often involves lifting an adult into and out of bed or the shower. So it’s no wonder that, as the economy has improved, it’s become harder to fill those jobs. People who would have taken them in 2009 or 2010 can now get better jobs. But it leaves a lot of very necessary jobs unfilled, and the problem is likely to get worse over time.
One of seven caregiving positions in Wisconsin nursing homes and group homes were unfilled, one survey discovered; 70 percent of administrators reported a lack of qualified job applicants. As a result, 18 percent of long-term-care facilities had to limit admissions, declining care to more than 5,300 vulnerable people. (Altogether, more than 87,000 people live in 4,102 nursing homes and residential care facilities in the state.)
“The words ‘unprecedented’ and ‘desperate’ come to mind,” said John Sauer, president and chief executive of LeadingAge Wisconsin, which represents not-for-profit long-term-care institutions. “In my 28 years in the business, this is the most challenging workforce situation I’ve seen.”
Sauer and others blame inadequate payments from Medicaid — which funds about two-thirds of nursing homes’ business — for the bind. In rural areas, especially, operators are at the breaking point.
When a business can’t find the workers it needs, the answer is usually that it needs to pay more to compete for workers. But when you’re talking about Medicaid, individual businesses can’t make that decision. It’s a matter of government policy, and at the federal level and in altogether too many states, Republicans are standing in the way of adequate funding.
The stakes are incredibly high for the people in need of care. Barbara Vedder, paralyzed from the chest down, told the Washington Post’s Judith Graham that “It’s getting much, much, much more difficult to find willing, capable people to help me” and:
When caregivers don’t show up or shifts are cut back or canceled, “I don’t get proper cleaning around my catheter or in my groin area,” Vedder continued. “I’ll skip a meal or wait several hours to take a pill. I won’t get my range-of-motion exercises, or my wheelchair cushion might slip out of place and I’ll start getting sore. Basically, I start losing my health.”
Increasing funding would help protect people’s health, it would create good jobs, and it would keep elderly and disabled people living in their homes rather than moving to nursing homes (that don’t have room for them because of the same funding crisis). But to Republicans, Making America Great Again does not involve protecting Vedder’s health or making sure that the people who provide her care are paid a living wage.