The study, called Improving Care for Older Adults, provides policymakers and care providers with guidelines for reform.
The guidelines focused on five essential themes that are care settings, better integrations for long-term care into communities, family caregivers, direct care workers and funding.
The study assembled nearly 60 experts on long-term care to brainstorm in a series of three meetings on the topic of ‘rethinking care for older adults’.
Building on this, the report was also based on a 2021 project that took together 30 stakeholders. These explored issues in caregiving and identified concrete steps to take.
Researchers recognised that the US healthcare system does not fit well the reality of ageing today. According to them, the system should retain and expand what is working while fostering the adaptation of services, setting, and programs to better fit these preferences and realities.
The study recognised three broad areas that need particular focus:
- Creating a constellation of care settings with viable business models, so that preferred options are available as a person ages;
- Ensuring that there are enough caregivers qualified to provide needed care and to support family caregivers;
- Adequately funding the system of care, with payment systems and other features that are aligned with the reality of ageing.
In a more general way, this project shows that a diverse group of policy experts could reach broad consensus on many critical long-term care issues.