File under: another clever Idea that is not happening (yet).
They are facing a shortage of all kinds of professionals with expertise in treating older patients: geriatricians, nurse, social workers, geriatric psychiatrists. Scratch, that - we have scarcity, as a report by the Institute of Medicine of course back in 2008. In fact, the majority of the counties in the United States does not geriatricians practice within their borders.
The real challenge, according to Nancy Lundebjerg, director of the American Geriatrics Society and co-organizer of a coalition of the Alliance of nursing workforce: "we can keep the shortage of people with this formation get worse?"
The problem arises in part from the reluctance of the students specialize in geriatrics or Gerontology. Only 2% of nurses and social workers do, said Christopher Langston, program director at the John Hartford Foundation., which helped to finance the Institute of medicine's report.
And less than 400 geriatricians year out programmes of academic training, in part because perceptual (students see it as a depressing field, although its practitioners it is very satisfying) but in part by financial. With virtually all Medicare patients, they are the least paid in all specialist doctors geriatricians. They are actually penalized for its decision to the care of the elderly. After three-year internal medicine residents, their income falls by $15,000 if he completes the fourth year of the training needed to become a geriatrician, says Mr. Langston. More training is even less money.
The body of the national health service offers a modest solution, which should be in small scale: an agenda for cancellation of loans to help pay off the staggering debt that many health professionals correspond to them as students. Average physician, for example, owes more than $150,000 after completing his education. Doctors, nurses, dentists, social workers and other professionals who agree to work in areas like rural Texas or the center of the Baltimore City are eligible for reimbursement of loans of up to $30,000 a year for two years or $170,000 for five years. Reimbursement may not always delete the debt of the members of the body, but can make a substantial difference and perhaps a more attractive alternative process geriatrics.
But specialists in geriatrics, incredibly, are not included in the federal law on eligibility for the national health service corps. Created to increase the supply of primary care practitioners, the body allows specialists in geriatrics to participate at the moment, thanks to the intervention of Secretary of health and human services, Kathleen Sibelius. But unlike professionals in family and in internal medicine and Pediatrics, geriatrics specialists is recent and impermanent. A future Secretary could bounce them.
"Do you think that our health system is facing a crisis of kid," said Mr. Langston, with some frustration. "It is not, it faces a crisis of age person."
The Alliance of labour force for the elderly, whose 28 member organizations include a series of consumer, professional and governmental groups concerned with ageing, from the Alzheimer's Association to the federal Department of Veterans Affairs - care has proposed an amendment to add specialists in geriatric law governing body. It is a simple Bill, only 29 words for a long time as the title, the care of an Aging America Act. It does not require additional costs, but if it is successful in the development of more people in service, Congress could decide to eventually increase the appropriation of the body.
But the legislation probably not going anywhere for now. An earlier version died of neglect in the last Congress. This time, two Democratic senators (Barbara Boxer of California and the outgoing Herb Kohl of Wisconsin), a Republican (Susan Collins of Maine) and an independent (Bernie Sanders of Vermont) co-sponsoring the revised legislation. Sponsors are still looking for sponsors in the House. But the current financial and political climate makes it unlikely that the Bill will pass this session. The best hope is to attach to any piece of legislation must pass, according to Mr. Langston.
So here we are with 6,000 geriatricians, a number that is actually declining. Is equivalent to a medical specialist for every 2,000 Americans over the age of 75, a group to obtain much more quickly. "It is not a good relationship," said Mr. Langston.
Useful Paula is the author of "when the time comes: families with aging parents share their struggles and solutions."
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