Health Affairs has published a special issue devoted entirely to long-term care.

Several of the authors featured in the January 2010 edition, titled “Advancing Long-Term Services and Supports,” were also panelists at a policy briefing hosted by the health policy journal on January 5.

Workforce Issues Featured

The topics covered by Health Affairs are wide-ranging, with articles on long-term care legislation; sites, services, and issues; quality of care; policy and financing; and palliative care and end-of-life.

The special issue also includes three articles on “Caregivers and the Workforce”:

• “The Faces of Home Care,” by Howard Gleckman, profiles a home health aide who is employed by Home Care Associates of Philadelphia and a licensed certified nursing assistant who is a freelance home care worker in Arkansas. Gleckman’s compassionate portrait points out the challenges of recruiting people to do this important work without better wages and benefits.
• “Improving the Long-Term Care Workforce Serving Older Adults,” by Robyn Stone and Mary F. Harahan, discusses the shortage of paid caregivers and provides strategies to reverse the trend.
• “Bridging Troubled Waters: Family Caregivers, Transitions, and Long-Term Care,” by Carol Levine, Deborah Halper, Ariella Peist, and David A. Gould, focuses on the care transition process and how to use it as an opportunity to engage family caregivers as important partners in achieving better patient outcomes.

The Briefing

At the half-day policy briefing, some of the peer-reviewed journal’s contributing authors were joined by other experts from the field for three panel presentations and a Q&A on:

• Who Is Getting and Delivering Care?
• Care and Living Venues
• Who Pays and How?

Constance M. Garner, policy director for disability and special needs populations at the Senate HELP Committee, also spoke.

The SCAN Foundation, which focuses on advancing development of a sustainable continuum of quality care for seniors, provided funding for the “Advancing Long-Term Services and Supports” issue of Health Affairs.