{"id":521222,"date":"2026-03-13T13:42:21","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T13:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/521222\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T13:42:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T13:42:21","slug":"the-looming-crisis-in-home-health-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/521222\/","title":{"rendered":"The Looming Crisis in Home Health Care"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It is not unheard of for the demand for home health care to exceed the supply. One <a href=\"https:\/\/www.healthaffairs.org\/doi\/abs\/10.1377\/hlthaff.2022.01351?journalCode=hlthaff\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">2023 study<\/a> found that the number of home care workers per 100 participants in the Medicaid home and community-based services program declined by 11.6 percent between 2013 and 2019. According to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bls.gov\/ooh\/healthcare\/home-health-aides-and-personal-care-aides.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Bureau of Labor Statistics<\/a>, there will be an increase of nearly 740,000 home health and personal care aide jobs between 2025 and 2034, a 17 percent growth rate\u2014by comparison, the average growth rate for all jobs is 3 percent. <\/p>\n<p>However, that growth may be insufficient. According to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.phinational.org\/resource\/direct-care-workers-in-the-united-states-key-facts-2025\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">health policy organization PHI<\/a>, the home care workforce will add 772,000 new direct jobs over the next decade, the majority of which will be for the home care workforce; however, there will also be 9.7 million job openings in direct care as a whole from 2024 through 2034. <\/p>\n<p>Those struggles to meet demand may be exacerbated by recent federal policy changes, including dramatic cuts to Medicaid approved by Congress last year. Despite <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kff.org\/health-costs\/the-affordability-of-long-term-care-and-support-services\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">confusion among many adults<\/a> over how long-term care is financed, Medicare\u2014the public health program for elderly Americans\u2014does not cover long-term stays in nursing facilities, nor does it pay for the majority of home-health services. Instead, Medicaid, which provides health care for low-income individuals and is jointly funded by federal and state governments, covers the bulk of long-term care costs in the country. This can also help explain lower wages for home health care aides, as Medicaid reimbursement <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commonwealthfund.org\/blog\/2022\/how-differences-medicaid-medicare-and-commercial-health-insurance-payment-rates-impact\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">tends to be less<\/a> than that of Medicare or other insurance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is not unheard of for the demand for home health care to exceed the supply. One 2023&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":["post-521222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}