The Eldercare Workforce Alliance (EWA) is a group of 25 national organizations joined together to address the immediate and future workforce crisis in caring for an aging America. The EWA was formed in response to the Institute of Medicine’s critical report, “Re-tooling for an Aging America: Building the Health Care Workforce,” which called for preparing our health care system to care for older Americans.

The EWA is co-convened by PHI and the American Geriatrics Society. PHI is working to ensure that the IOM report recommendations specific to direct-care workers – improving wages and benefits and increasing training standards for these workers – feature prominently in the Alliance’s work:

IOM Recommendation 5.1: States and the federal government should increase minimum training standards for all direct-care workers. Federal requirements for the minimum training of CNAs and home health aides should be raised to at least 120 hours and should include demonstration of competence in the care of older adults as a criterion for certification. States should also establish minimum training requirements for personal care aides.

IOM Recommendation 5.2: State Medicaid programs should increase pay and fringe benefits for direct-care workers through such measures as wage pass-throughs, setting wage floors, establishing minimum percentages of service rates directed to direct-care labor costs, and other means.