We are pleased to have our work included in a new special issue of Health Affairs!
The June 2019 issue of Health Affairs examines the increasing challenge of developing community approaches to caring for people with serious illness and the frailties of aging. This special issue devoted to understanding how we can recruit, train and deploy the necessary clinical and non-clinical workforce and fully integrate family caregivers into care processes. A briefing of the issue was held on June 4th in Washington DC.
Our first paper was presented at the briefing by Karen Donelan: Care Management For Older Adults: The Roles of Nurses, Social Workers, and Physicians
Authors: Karen Donelan, Yuchiao Chang, Julie Berrett-Abebe, Joanne Spetz, David Auerbach, Linda Norman and Peter Buerhaus.
(Image Credit: Health Affairs)
Our colleague Joanne Spetz also has an article in this issue: Home And Community-Based Workforce For Patients With Serious Illness Requires Support To Meet Growing Needs
Authors: Joanne Spetz, Robyn Stone, Susan Chapman, and Natasha Bryant
Drawing from the 2018 survey we conducted with clinicians in primary care and geriatric practices, we focus on professional staff roles in care management, care coordination and social issues assessment. Key takeaways:
- Many practices do not employ registered nurse and social worker professionals.
- When both RN and SW are present, care coordination and assessment of social issues work shifts to those professionals, and physician time in these activities decreases
- Further research is needed to understand how to build effective and efficient teams in these areas, and how to assure that community primary care practices have adequate staffing
healthteams4frailelders.blog 