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Eldercare
Responsibilities Strain Careers, Marriages
More than One-Third of Care Recipients
Under-Medicate Themselves, Skip Meals
June 9, 2004 - More than one-third (35%) of
caregivers who work outside the home and 30% of those who are married
believe that eldercare responsibilities have strained their job
performance and marriage, according to a national survey of caregivers
released today by SeniorBridge Family, a provider of home-based
eldercare services.
The survey - which polled men and women who care
for an aging, parent, friend or relative at home or in an independent
living facility - found that caregivers spend an average of 10 hours per
week coordinating or actively providing care.
Despite their sacrifices, 48% of the caregivers
surveyed lack confidence in the quality of their caregiving
arrangements. An even higher percentage (64%) is dissatisfied or only
marginally satisfied with the convenience of these arrangements. By
point of comparison, only 29% of the survey respondents who rely on
outside childcare services worry about the quality of their children's
care, and only 35% are dissatisfied with the convenience of these
services.
"Most caregivers are time-starved and overwhelmed
by the complexity of their caregiving responsibilities," notes Larry
Sosnow, Chief Executive Officer of SeniorBridge Family. "Fully 80% of
the survey respondents work full-time outside the home and are juggling
eldercare, childcare and job responsibilities. At the same time, many
are caring for patients with increasingly serious physical and cognitive
impairments - conditions such as Alzheimer's Disease and debilitating
arthritis, which are on the rise due to longer life expectancies."
Home Alone
While care recipients in the SeniorBridge Family
study receive, on average, 16 to 20 hours of care from all caregivers
combined - paid and unpaid - nearly half (46%) of the men and women
surveyed believe that there are additional hours of care that are needed
but not provided. One in ten estimate that care recipients need - but
are not receiving - more than 30 hours of additional care per week. Half
believe that care recipients need eleven or more additional hours of
care per week.
Perhaps as a result of this shortfall, nearly half
(44%) of the survey respondents report that care recipients have missed
meals or suffered from poor nutritional intake, while an additional
one-third (32%) have visited an emergency room or sustained injuries
from an accident. Another 22% have been alone at home when an emergency
occurred.
"As the time demands and costs associated with
eldercare escalate, many caregivers feel they have no choice than but to
cut back on care and supervision," says Sosnow. "The result,
unfortunately, is a sharp increase in nutritional problems, injuries and
drug noncompliance. All too often, there is no care coordinator in place
who is responsible for ensuring a comprehensive and consistent level of
caregiving."
The New Crisis in Prescription Drugs
Nearly half (43%) of the caregivers surveyed report
that their patients take five or more prescription drugs each day, and
12% report daily regimens of nine or more drugs. On a weekly basis, the
percentages escalate to 65% for five or more drugs and 51% for nine or
more. While 14% of caregivers believe that the person for whom they care
has over-medicated themselves over the past 12 months, non-compliance is
a far bigger problem. More than one-third (37%) of caregivers say the
person for whom they care has under-medicated themselves or forgotten to
take medication during the past year.
Among the survey's other key findings:
-- High Anxiety: Nearly half (41%) of the
caregivers surveyed report that they worry six or more times per week
about the well-being of the person for whom the care, ahead of worries
about their children (27%), job security (22%), retirement savings
(23%), their partner's health (17%), the stock market (17%), terrorism
(12%) or their own health (10%). "Despite the fact that we're at war and
the economy is volatile, it is eldercare concerns that are keeping
caregivers up at night," notes Sosnow.
-- Sibling Issues - Cracks Emerge in the Ties That
Bind: Although most (90%) of the caregivers surveyed indicate that they
have siblings, few receive substantial help from them. Fully 60%
indicate that their brothers and sisters do not provide significant
caregiving support, and 31% believe that caregiving has fueled family
tensions. Caregivers with all male siblings are less likely to receive
support than those with a mix of male and female siblings (26% vs. 45%).
-- An Expensive Proposition: Among caregivers who
currently employ paid full- or part-time help, nearly half (43%) spend
more than $500 per week and 20% spend more than $1,000 per week on
outside care. Most (65%) subsidize the cost of these services with the
care recipient's savings, while 52% reach into their own pockets to pay
for care. Respondents who view themselves as primary caregivers (50%)
are somewhat more likely to use the care recipient's own insurance or
savings to fund outside care than are supplemental caregivers (33%) or
long-distance caregivers (37%).
-- Misunderstanding Medicare: Caregivers
overestimate the percentage of eldercare costs covered by Medicare.
While only 3% of the survey respondents expect Medicare to cover all
(i.e. 100%) of current and future eldercare costs, 26% expect to be
reimbursed for most (75% or more) of their care-related expenses and 50%
expect half or more of costs to be covered. In reality, Medicare will
typically cover only 5-20% of the cost of eldercare.
-- Squeezed From all Sides: Caregivers rank
"juggling caregiving with other work/personal commitments" as their
number one problem, cited by 40% of respondents. Other major problems
include "providing care from a distance" (30%), "dealing with other
family members" (27%), "coordinating care among doctors, care providers
and outside specialists" (27%) and "handling care recipients' emotional
problems" (25%). Men are slightly more concerned than women with
"providing care from a distance" (35% vs. 25%), while women are more
concerned than men with "coping with their own emotions of fear, anger
and guilt" (25% vs. 16%) and "handling care recipients' emotional
problems" (28% vs. 22%).
-- Help On The Way: While roughly one-third (34%)
of the survey respondents currently receive help from paid caregivers,
68% of those without outside help indicate that they are very likely or
somewhat likely to employ a paid caregiver in the future.
-- Male Caregiving Comes of Age: Surprisingly, an
almost equal percentage of men and women describe themselves as primary
caregivers. More than one-third of men (36%) and women (34%) identify
themselves as the main providers of care, while roughly the same
percentage (36% of men and 31% of women) get help from one or more paid
care providers. Nearly one in six men (14%) and women (15%) live at a
distance and spend most of their time coordinating care. Overall, women
spend slightly more time providing and coordinating care than men, with
24% of the women surveyed spending more than 10 hours per week on care,
compared with 20% of men.
-- Mothering Our Mothers: While 22% of the
caregivers surveyed are caring for their fathers, twice as many (44%)
are caring for their mothers. Other recipients of care include
grandparents (10%), friends (7%), aunts/uncles (4%), spouses (4%) and
brothers/sisters (2%). Male caregivers are equally as likely to be
caring for their mothers as female caregivers.
The SeniorBridge Family Caregiver Study was
conducted by an online research firm during April 2004. The survey
polled 514 adult caregivers across the U.S. who currently spend (or
recently spent) more than two hours per week caring for an aging friend
or relative and have total annual household income of at least $100,000.
While all of the caregivers surveyed provide or coordinate home-based
care, 22% reside with the care recipient, 32% live within 10 miles of
the care recipient's home and 14% live more than 200 miles away. Roughly
one-quarter (27%) of the respondents live more than 30 miles from the
patients for whom they care.
Founded in 2000, SeniorBridge Family is a national
provider of home-based eldercare services. Unlike traditional homecare,
which treats illness, the SeniorBridge Family model addresses the
well-being, comfort and functionality of clients while offering
substantial practical and emotional support to their families. The
company provides families and patients with an interdisciplinary team of
highly qualified professionals, specializing in the field of aging and
chronic care. All SeniorBridge Family services - which include medical
(nursing, home health care, nutritional counseling/monitoring) and
wellness services (e.g., social work, exercise, cognitive fitness,
nutrition, financial and pre-legal services management) - are designed
to help patients stay in their homes or assisted living facilities as
long as possible. The company has offices in Baltimore, Boca Raton,
Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, Hackensack, Indianapolis,
Montclair, New York, Pittsburgh, San Antonio, Sarasota and West Palm
Beach. For more information about SeniorBridge Family, please visit the
company's Web site at
www.seniorbridgefamily.com
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