Steven Dawson and Dorie Seavey

PHI’s president and its director of policy research both spoke at the March 12 Institute of Medicine (IOM)  symposium called  “Health Reform for an Aging America.”

The IOM released a report in April of 2008 titled Retooling for an Aging America: Building the Health Care Workforce, which provided policy recommendations to help prepare America’s health care workforce for the rapidly growing elderly population. The purpose of this week’s symposium was to explain how those recommendations are central to the national health care debate and should be included as a top priority in health care reform.

Along with co-convener Nancy Lundebjerg of the American Geriatrics Society, PHI President Steven Dawson spoke about the initiation of the Eldercare Workforce Alliance and its efforts to ensure that the IOM report’s recommendations  for strengthening the direct-care workforce through improved wages, benefits, and training are implemented.

Dorie Seavey, PHI director of public policy, spoke to the symposium about compensation of direct-care workers. “We know that better wages and benefits are critical to ensuring a stable, qualified direct-care workforce, but unfortunately our policy practices aren’t aligned with this core reality,” she said.

Pointing out that the huge recruitment challenge to America’s eldercare and disability system is made more difficult by the poor quality of many direct-care jobs, Seavey focused on PHI’s national policy recommendation (pdf) for creating minimum standards for wages and benefits (pdf), and also for data collection and workforce monitoring (pdf).