The findings of a new study demonstrate a need for close collaborative care plans involving home health agencies and their patients’ informal caregivers, the researchers say.
For a study subsequently published in BMC Medicine, they surveyed 767 informal caregivers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland. Respondents reported hours and activities, care quality, positive aspects and burdens of caregiving, and they completed the Texas Revised Inventory of Grief. Potential costs were calculated by multiplying reported hours of activities by country-specific costs for that activity.
Costs to informal caregivers are larger than those for formal care services (health, social and voluntary combined) for people in the last three months of life, according to the study. “We learned that, if paid, the care provided by family and friends would cost more than all the formal care provided by the healthcare system,” said Steve Pantilat, M.D., of the University of California, San Francisco.
Also, poor quality home care was associated with a greater burden to informal caregivers, the study found.
