Help Wanted? Providing and Paying for Long-Term Care

This new report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) provides a comparative analysis of the common challenges and diverse solutions OECD countries are adopting to respond to the growing demand for long-term care services, particularly its implications for financing and labour markets.

Chapter 1 and 2 examine the growing demand for long-term care in the context of ageing societies, discuss demographic projections and their implications for long term care labour markets and expenditure

Chapter 3 and 4 discuss the role of family carers, the impact of caring on carers’mental health, poverty and labour market participation, as well as policies to support family carers.

Chapters 7 and 8 analyse, respectively, public and private coverage schemes for long-term care in OECD countries, while Chapter 9 discusses financing policies to improve access while keeping cost under
control.

Chapter 10 reviews options to improve value for money from long-term care services, and to manage more efficiently the interface between health and care.

The webpage for the report provides country data for OECD countries.

www.oecd.org/health/longtermcare/helpwanted

The Long-Term Care Workforce: Overview and Strategies to Adapt Supply to a Growing Demand

From the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), March 2009, this paper serves as a background document to commmittee work on the performance of long-term care systems, in particular to the issue of the LTC workforce and reviews country responses to a growing demand for LTC workers.

It is also one in a series of studies undertaken by OECD as part of a project on Health Workforce and International Migration.

Several policy solutions are being considered to manage a growing demand for LTC workers. These are examined in the report and include increasing the workforce by recruiting LTC workers from underrepresented or inactive populations or immigration; or investing in policies to make better use of available labour capacity. Another set of policy solutions relates to reducing the need for LTC workers by improving the productivity of LTC jobs.

To read the full report, go to:
http://www.olis.oecd.org/olis/2009doc.nsf/LinkTo/NT00000F0A/$FILE/JT03261422.PDF

The newest additions to PHI’s National Clearinghouse on the Direct Care Workforce:

PHI’s National Clearinghouse on the Direct Care Workforce is a national online library for people in search of solutions to the direct-care staffing crisis in long-term care. It houses over 800 articles, reports, issue briefs, and fact sheets on the direct-care workforce. The latest publications include:

• The need for national training standards/guidelines for privately paid geriatric home caregivers
• A synthesis of direct service workforce demographics and challenges across intellectual/ developmental disabilities, aging, physical disabilities, and behavioral health
• Home and community-based services: Public policies to improve access, costs, and quality
• Who are direct-care workers? (Updated version)