AGORA: The private duty marketplace
Judith Clinco, RN, BSN, CHHE, president and CEO of Catalina In-Home Services in Tucson, is also now our new consulting editor for Private Duty Homecare. During recent discussions with her, we asked for her thoughts on how PDH can best fulfill the informational needs of its readership.
Clinco suggested that because home care standards and regulations vary so greatly across the country, a positive step in serving the PDH readership would be to open a forum on how to bring about uniform standards for private duty home care nationwide. These would include educational and other standards for caregivers, standards for practice and licensing, and whatever other standards readers wanted to consider.
These are her thoughts on that subject: "There are a lot of things we could consider using to increase the standard of care that’s provided to the client and the community, and the kind of support, education,and acknowledgement that the home care sides get for the great job they’re doing. It really is being of service to another. It’s hard work. We don’t pay people a livable wage, and we don’t provide benefits, and we also don’t provide acknowledgement and recognition from the agencies or the community for the kind of work they’re doing. We don’t recognize family caregivers either. They’re just behind closed doors doing their work and not getting any pay.
With regard to the home care aides, I think our biggest challenge is how are we going to be able to recruit a qualified labor force if we don’t take the risks and pay excellent wages. We have to provide a livable wage to our employees, or in this labor market we are not going to be able to recruit good people and retain them long-term. And if we don’t retain them long-term, there’s nothing that goes to the bottom line. I have suggested in print that maybe we should go ahead as a country and subsidize the industry.
I’m charging $16.80 an hour. I provide health insurance to people who work with me 30 hours or more a week, and then I do a percentage of the health insurance on a yearly basis. By the time my staff have been with me for five years, I’m paying 50% of their health insurance premiums. But I can’t provide everyone’s health insurance for all my employees. I also give everyone a week’s paid vacation.
I would love to have some subsidy for my 150-hour training course. My training courses cost me a lot of money, and if people don’t stay with me, they don’t put anything to my agency’s bottom line. It’s another contribution to the community — but it would be nice if I could be subsidized.
I know that changing the verbiage in that law is an undertaking. That’s something that we in the industry would have to stand up for.
In hospitals, nursing homes, and health care clinics, employees are able to work 80 hours within the two-week pay period. They can’t work for more than eight hours a day, but they could work for 10 consecutive days and then have four days off within that two-week period. The way I’m boxed in now, my staff can’t work more than 40 hours in any given week.
When you read the fair labor law, it says that if you are a health care provider, and you are taking care of elders or the mentally ill, that you fall under this particular guideline, but you have to be a facility. It doesn’t even mention home care providers because when the law was written we weren’t providing home care the way we are today. This is a federal labor law. All they need to do is rewrite the law to say a health care institution is defined as a facility or an agency that is providing care to people in their homes.
What are your thoughts about these issues? Would you like to participate in a nationwide movement to raise and unify private duty home care standards, for the benefit of all concerned? How do you think it could best begin, and what can PDH — as an apolitical facilitator — do to help you? Write to us, e-mail or snail mail. Addresses are in the back of this newsletter. Phone numbers are, too.
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