They all seem to be always hiring, and desperate for workers. No matter where I go, I always see signs from one of these companies looking for workers. I also never hear about any of the companies growing. They always seem to be looking for “caregivers and aides”, but never anything else. Do they abuse the caregivers until they quit?
Even fast food places occasionally have time when they don’t have hiring signs. But these home healthcare places invariably have them.
I love it when a question answers itself.
My local NPR station had a story about HHC workers a few months ago. Basically, they are paid like crap, get no benefits, and have heavy physical labor, often from grouchy elderly patients. Turnover is extremely high.
Yes, they abuse the hell out of their workers. They are minimum wage and below and may have questionable legal status and few options. Also mostly women who are paid little for exhausting work with interminable hours.
Both my grandmothers had full time care givers in the last year or two of their lives. Let me tell you, the work is brutal, even if the family is a good one, like mine (:)). You have to be on your toes throughout your shift, you might have to take care of all sanitation and hygiene issues.
On top of that you are in someones home, and their life continues. You see private moments. Do you remember being at your friends place and overhearing an argument between their parents (or thinking that you did). How did that make you feel. Same for our caregivers. Or overhear and occassionally see people humping, arguing with their bank manager, disciplining their kids…
I am amazed some people last as long as they do.
It is a miserable job, and pays shit.
Totally anecdotal, but it seems a huge percentage of SS disability claimants have past work as CNAs. One of the few unskilled jobs readily available.
My co-worker’s wife works as a manager of a group home. She’s paid less than $30k per year and works 60-100 hours a week, far below minimum wage. Looks like they’ll get some relief from the overtime rules changes, but it’ll take years and the company (cheapskates) is already panicking and requesting a deferral.
He says most of their workers are college students in the healthcare field who are doing it only to get some work credit on their resume, even though it has little to do with what their degrees are in. And yeah, they get paid like crap too.
There are two different types of home health care agencies. The first focuses on Skilled Nursing (provided by RNs and, more rarely, LPNs) and Physical Therapy, with some Occupational Therapy and maybe a couple of CNAs (Certified Nursing Assistants) or HHAs (Home Health Aides). We are the ones who come into the home for an hour or so at a time, do our thing, and leave. We don’t work multihour shifts in one home, and our care doesn’t replace the care of a family member or paid caregiver. We are paid for by Medicare and most private insurance. (Technically, we have an out-of-pocket price list, but it’s ridiculous and no one pays it.) Our work is intended to be intermittent and short term. We are a fairly stable industry. And individually, we get paid pretty well for our chosen career paths. If you look at my “per visit” rate and assume it’s my hourly rate because I spend an hour at a visit, it looks phenomenally good, but if you factor in the time I spend driving and charting, it ends up being right about average for an RN of my experience in my city.
But we still face quite a bit of turnover, in particular among the RNs, because that’s a feature of RNs in general. RNs are notoriously unloyal to their employers. (With good reason, because most of them are trying to screw us at every turn, especially the hospitals.) We often see RNs take some home health patients while they’re also working in a hospital and they want to make some extra money on their days off, then the patient load at the hospital goes up, or staffing levels go down, or whatever, and they quit the home health gig to do more overtime at the hospital. Same with nursing homes. Home health jobs are pretty easy to get, so no one worries too much about quitting one; they can always get another later.
My company pays our CNAs almost double our local minimum wage, but we’re one of the better paying ones, as I understand it. We still have quite a bit of turnover, but that’s mostly because we often don’t have enough patients who need a CNA to keep them happy with their hours. Most of our patients have family members who can do the things a CNA can, and Medicare will only pay for a CNA while the person also has a medical need for an RN, PT or OT. Which is stupid, because it means once they no longer need me, I also have to take away their CNA. I hate that. So I try very hard to get their family trained and them as independent as possible instead of getting a doctor’s order for a CNA, so they don’t become dependent on a CNA they can’t keep once they’re not sick enough for a nurse. Good for the patients…bad for the CNA who wants more hours.
The other kind of home health care is not focused on nursing or therapy, although RNs sometimes work for them as case managers. These are the companies which focus on “caregiving” or “companion care” and “housekeepers” or “homemakers”. These are unlicensed people who are hired at the patient’s own expense - or through a program like Catholic Charities - who spend hours a day several days a week with the patient, and will help to cook and clean house and do laundry. Some will help the person to bathe and eat, some won’t. Some will remind the patient to take their medications, and some won’t. None are allowed to actually administer medications.
If I have a patient who would benefit from those services, my company will contact one of those companies. Those are the best long term options for unskilled caregiving, and if someone is poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, they will qualify in my city to receive those services for free, paid for by various state and charity funds.
It’s the second kind of home health that is full of underpaid overworked saints.