Abstract
Home health and personal care aides are one of the largest groups of health care workers in the US, with nearly three million people providing direct care for people with serious illness living in the community. These home care workers face challenges in recruitment, training, retention, and regulation, and there is a lack of data and research to support evidence-based policy change. Personal care aides receive little formal training, and they experience low pay and a lack of respect for the skill required for their jobs. High turnover and occupational injury rates are widely reported. There is little research on the factors associated with higher-quality home care, the extent to which worker training affects client outcomes, and how regulations affect access to and quality of home care. Health care leaders should seek to fill these gaps in knowledge, support the establishment of training standards and programs, implement Medicaid reimbursement strategies that incentivize improvements in pay and working conditions, reform regulations that now prevent the full utilization of home care workers, and create sustainable career pathways in home care policies.
Highlights
Home health and personal care aides are one of the largest groups of health care workers in the US, with nearly three million people providing direct care for people with serious illness living in the community
These home care workers face challenges in recruitment, training, retention, and regulation, and there is a lack of data and research to support evidence-based policy change
In this article we focus on personal care aides because of their essential role in long-term care, we discuss some issues that are common to both types of home care workers
Summary
There are two main occupations associated with the direct care of people in their homes: personal care aides, called home care aides or personal care assistants, and home health aides. More than two million people work as personal care aides,[2] and 800,000 people work as home health aides.[3] These are among the fastest-growing occupations in the US and are anticipated to grow more than 40 percent from 2016 to 2026.4 There is significant overlap in the roles of these two types of aides and some differences in their training, certification requirements, and employment. Some people require short-term care to manage a medical condition or to rehabilitate after an acute condition such as a heart attack or stroke. This type of care is usually provided by licensed home health agencies that employ certified home health aides. In this article we focus on personal care aides because of their essential role in long-term care, we discuss some issues that are common to both types of home care workers
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
