During the pandemic, health care leaders say the demand for home healthcare workers has gone up while the number of people willing to work has gone down.
Senior care officials say as the baby boomer generation is getting older, the need for caretakers is getting higher every day, but many facilities just don’t have enough staffing to keep up with the demand. Home Instead Senior Care is a home health care service provider for people who need non-medical or personal care services such as help bathing or getting dressed. Owner Andrew Garrean says before the pandemic began they had 100 employees, but now they are down to 76. He says the medical field as a whole is struggling right now and home health care has not been immune.
“There are two factors working against us,” Garrean said. “There are so many baby boomers that are turning seventy every day so we’ve got more people to care for.”
Garrean said the other is that a lot of people are switching careers or simply just staying home to spend time with family instead. He said either way they are losing people to other options. He says they have been fortunate they haven’t lost more people but he said staff members are working a lot of overtime and they are spending far more than usual on recruiting methods.
Garrean says it’s important to bring enough employees into work because these seniors deserve to stay at home if they choose to do so.
“So many people in the generation we are caring for have their homes paid for and a lot of them have lived there forty or fifty years and they’re like I don’t want to leave my home so I think it’s important to have that option,” Garrean said.
He says for their facility you don’t need the experience to apply, you can get on-site training until you feel comfortable doing the work on your own. To apply, go to homeinstead/tulsa or call 918-384-0980.
