Data

This fact sheet issued by the AARP Public Policy Institute examines recently published data shedding light on the characteristics of direct care workers, their working conditions, future demand for their services, and efforts to improve recruitment and retention of these workers.

Over the last four years, the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured has been tracking the national development of the three main Medicaid HCBS programs that states can operate: (1) optional 1915(c) HCBS waivers, (2) the mandatory home health benefit, and (3) the optional state plan personal care services benefit. This brief presents expenditures and participant data on all three Medicaid HCBS programs and findings from the survey of policies on 1915(c) waivers.

This tool kit has been designed as a result of three years of collaboration building workshops in 33 different states. The impetus arose from the need to disseminate the latest information on aging and intellectual or developmental disabilities (I/DD) and to find ways in which agencies can collaborate to assist caregivers and care recipients. This tool kit is an accumulation of the materials presented at the workshops and provides agencies with resources for forming new partnerships.

A team of staff has been working to update and improve all Medicaid waiver data on the National Association of State Medicaid Directors (NASMD) website. The intent is to create a comprehensive, up-to-date resource that would be useful to a broad audience. The updated waivers website now contains summary information on all 1915(b), 1915(c), 1915(b/c) combination, 1115 and PACE waivers in clear, readable spreadsheets. The web site also provides textual information describing each type of waiver.

KaiserEDU.org is designed to provide students, faculty and others interested in learning about health policy easy access to the latest data, research, analysis, and developments in health policy. This site includes narrated slide tutorials, background reference libraries, and issue modules on current topics and policy debates.

This report presents information aggregated from 13 F2F HICs and provides an early indication of the extent and importance of the activities of these critical family centers. The data indicates that F2F HICs are steadily increasing their capacity to document what they do. Both families and professionals frequently seek expertise and assistance from F2F HICs. The most common concerns reported relate to needs for adequate health care financing and links to community resources.

Caregiving is often life changing and consuming, leaving some caregivers exhausted and depressed. Some 15 percent of family caregivers report high levels of overall stress as a result of caring for an older family member or friend with long-term care needs. Caring for a friend or relative, however, can also be a positive and rewarding experience. This Profile provides a data overview of the physical, emotional, financial and social experiences of primary family caregivers.

This memorandum presents state-by-state data on Medicaid long term care expenditures in Federal Fiscal Year 2004 (October 2003 through September 2004). The accompanying tables present data on Medicaid Expenditures for Long-Term Care services from 1992 to 2004. A new table this year shows the effect of supplemental nursing facility payments in some states on expenditure data. A separate file ranks states based on the proportion of LTC spending for community services.

This entry presents data on Medicaid 1915(c) Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) waiver expenditures from Federal Fiscal Years 1999-2004. As in previous years, information is classified for each individual HCBS waiver by the target population served in order to present information on the distribution of HCBS waiver expenditures across long term care populations. Tables include waiver spending by target population; growth in spending; expenditures by state; distribution of expenditures.

This fact sheet gives an overview of the direct-care workforce describing job titles, responsibilities, worker demographics, wages, benefits, and the growing demand for workers. These workers go by many names, but they fall into three main occupational categories: nursing assistants (usually known as certified nursing assistants or CNAs), home health aides, and personal and home care aides. View this overview for statistics and data.