RAND Perspective: The Coronavirus Pandemic Highlights Why Family Caregivers Need to Be Integrated into the Health Care Team and Shows Us How to Make It Happen
The RAND Corporation has published a perspective, "The Coronavirus Pandemic Highlights Why Family Caregivers Need to Be Integrated into the Health Care Team and Shows Us How to Make It Happen."
There are currently about 53 million family members in the United States providing care to loved ones by assisting with everyday activities, such as eating, bathing, dressing, driving, and taking medications. These caregivers provide a significant portion of health and support services to individuals with serious illnesses but are often overlooked by existing health care systems. Family caregivers cannot easily share important clinical or social information with other care providers or receive the necessary information to effectively support their loved ones.
This perspective builds on a recent RAND report, "A Framework for Integrating Family Caregivers Into the Health Care Team," and reexamines findings from that work in the context of COVID-19. The authors describe why it is more critical than ever to integrate family caregivers into patients' health care teams and highlight several solutions for accomplishing this goal.
The work of several JAHF grantees informed the publication, including OpenNotes and its JAHF project to expand family caregiver access to electronic health records, a Medicaid waiver analysis conducted by the NASHP RAISE Act Family Caregiver Resource and Dissemination Center, and the Caregiving in the U.S. 2020 report from AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving.
To read the perspective, click here.
To go to "A Framework for Integrating Family Caregivers Into the Health Care Team" report, click here.
