Kids Are Being Kept In Hospital Too Long Because U.S. Lacks Financially Supported Home Care System
It's much cheaper to provide sick children with home nurses, but there's a shortage of them because there's little incentive to get into the low-paying field.
Bloomberg:
America’s Home Nurse Shortage Is Stranding Kids In Hospitals
The U.S. health-care system has failed them in spectacular fashion even as it has put their parents under severe emotional and financial strain. All for the lack of home-care nurses. ...Lost amid the Trump administration’s drive to dismantle the Affordable Care Act—and the uncertain future of the government Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)—is the ongoing plight of children stuck in hospital beds long beyond what’s medically necessary. Unlike the elderly, for whom a certain level of health care is guaranteed under Medicare, children in the U.S. have no overarching protections. While children with medically complex problems from the poorest families receive some coverage for home nursing through federally funded Medicaid, other lower-income and middle-income families can wait years to get their child approved for such coverage. Most private insurance doesn’t cover nursing care at all. (Chen 1/8)
In other news on health care professionals —
Indianapolis Star:
Millennials Entering Nursing At Twice Baby Boomer Rate, Stopping Shortage
Facing a potential shortage due to baby boomers retiring, nursing has welcomed an unexpected surge of millennials entering the field. bThose millennials are nearly twice as likely to be nurses as their grandparents’ generation, the baby boomers, a recent Health Affairs study found. (Rudavsky, 1/5)
