AARP Says Support for New York Family Caregivers Needs to Happen Now

Kacso Sandor

Groups Unite To Urge Legislators to Expand Home Health Care Duties and Improve Patient Care

Advocates for seniors, people with disabilities and health care professionals today called on the state to improve patient care and provide critical support for family caregivers by allowing home health aides to perform more health care tasks with additional training.

The proposal has been recommended by the Governor’s Medicaid Redesign Team.

The groups say ensuring flexibility for health care providers and increasing the availability of the home- and community-based services workforce would allow more New Yorkers to receive their care at home and avoid unnecessary, unwanted and expensive placements in institutional settings that are often paid for by taxpayers through Medicaid.

Currently, many health related tasks fall to the family caregiver. Allowing nurses to delegate and transfer authority to perform these tasks to trained home health aides in regular direct contact with patients will go far to improving care and relieving burdened family caregivers.

“It's past time to embrace this common sense proposal as our population ages and New Yorkers' care needs increase,” said Beth Finkel, State Director of AARP in New York State. “Allowing properly trained certified and supervised advanced home health aides would improve access to care - in New Yorkers' homes, rather than in costly, taxpayer-funded institutional settings. Providing this critical support to family caregivers would help them help their loved ones age with dignity in their own homes – as the vast majority want - while saving taxpayers money.”

Already, 16 other states allow nurses to assign more tasks to paid aides than New York does, but as New York’s population ages, the need for long-term care will only increase.

“This legislation would be a significant improvement to the lives of thousands of caregivers and the aides who serve their loved ones and will benefit from additional training and the opportunity for advancement,” said Carol Rodat, New York Policy Director for PHI.  “

When consumers in traditional home care programs require routine care that is not permitted to be assigned by a registered nurse to a paid aide, the result can be a significant burden on family. For example, family members may have to make a trip home during lunch to give a relative medicine, but the need for the trip could be eliminated if the home health aide were able to take care of the task.

Washington State and New Jersey found that allowing nurses to assign tasks to trained and supervised aides brought improved consistency to the care and brought unlicensed and unregulated practice under the supervision of registered nurses.

Among the new tasks the groups say should be allowed to be performed by advanced home health aides include administering eye and ear drops and performing nebulizer treatments.

Contact: Stacey Kratz, skratz@aarp.org, 917-446-5182

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AARP is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, with a membership of more than 37 million, that helps people turn their goals and dreams into real possibilities, strengthens communities and fights for the issues that matter most to families such as healthcare, employment and income security, retirement planning, affordable utilities and protection from financial abuse. We advocate for individuals in the marketplace by selecting products and services of high quality and value to carry the AARP name as well as help our members obtain discounts on a wide range of products, travel, and services.  A trusted source for lifestyle tips, news and educational information, AARP produces AARP The Magazine, the world's largest circulation magazine; AARP Bulletin;  www.aarp.org ; AARP TV & Radio; AARP Books; and AARP en Español, a Spanish-language website addressing the interests and needs of Hispanics. AARP does not endorse candidates for public office or make contributions to political campaigns or candidates. AARP Foundation is an affiliated charity of AARP that is working to win back opportunity for struggling Americans 50+ by being a force for change on the most serious issues they face today: housing, hunger, income and isolation. AARP has staffed offices in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Learn more at  www.aarp.org .