Health Blog

Article by Richard Kuehn

Salinas, CA : Nurses, Caregivers Being Squeezed Out By Health Reform Regulations : View From A Private Duty Caregiver Serving Carmel, Carmel Valley, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Gilroy, Gonzalez, Greenfield, Hollister, King City, Marina, Monterey, Pacific Grove, Pebble Beach, Salinas, San Juan Bautista, Seaside And Soledad California

Health care jobs have been evaporating at a rapid rate across the country, and in particular on the Monterey Peninsula where the major hospitals have been laying off a significant number of staff members. I wrote on my blog yesterday about the potential for a new crop of jobs counseling Medicare patients regarding weight loss, which could provide employment for a number of out of work nurses and physicians assistants. Recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the health care sector is now the nation’s top job generator, with 95K new jobs this year. Over the past 12 months, health care has created 20% of all new jobs in this country. Unfortunately, most of these jobs are in administration, dealing with the increasingly burdensome paperwork needed to get treatment pre-authorized and then process insurance claims. Other jobs are being created to prepare for requirements of President Obama’s health care reform law. “We need to deal with new technology, new services, new regulations, electronic health records, government reporting requirements on quality,” said Exeter Health Resources VP of Strategy Mark Whitney. “A lot of this is related to the new federal health law,” he said. He said his firm, which runs a hospital, cut about 5% of its work force (110 people), most of them nurses and caregivers. It is now on a hiring binge, but the openings are in the administration department. The company is seeking billing specialists, information technology experts and program managers while cutting nursing and caregiver positions. This trend isn’t isolated to Exeter, it is nationwide. Although it’s good to see that health care reform is resulting in job creation, it’s sad that nurses and caregivers are being squeezed out of the equation in order to make room to hire more administrative staff. My former primary care physician told me many years ago he was retiring, and it was due to the increased burden from insurance companies. He said that when he started, he made over $ 200K per year and had two full time nurses and one billing person. Years later, he was making about $ 100K per year and had one nurse and three billing persons. When he retired, he was making only about $ 50K per year and could no longer afford to hire a nurse. All of the staff in the office were billing staff. In this world of increasingly better information technology systems, I don’t understand why the medical community can’t figure out a way to streamline paperwork so that the bulk of the employees are patient care specialists, not administration staff.http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/story/2011-11-30/health-care-creates-jobs/51506244/1

About Richard Kuehn & Family inHome Caregiving of Monterey:After more than a decade of caregiving, both in a professional environment and for a 97 year old family member I was dissatisfied with service from local caregiving agencies. I became convinced of the need for a service which provides very personal assistance to elderly and founded Family inHome Caregiving serving the Monterey Peninsula. Please visit my blog where I talk about important senior issues at:http://www.familyinhomecaregiving.com/Blog

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