Home Health & Hospice Week

A new Rand Corp. study sheds light on how Americans are paying for home care.

“Nearly a third of Americans who arranged paid care sought gray market care for persons with dementia, and most (65%) combined it with unpaid care,” says the study published in the latest issue of the Journal of Applied Gerontology. Gray market care consists of “paid providers who are unrelated to the recipient, not working for a regulated agency, and potentially unscreened and untrained, for aging and dementia-related long-term care,” the study defines.

“Without agency oversight, the quality of care provided by gray market caregivers is unknown, and the potential for exploitation or abuse — of both the care recipient or the care provider — has not been systematically studied,” says study author Regina Shih, according to a release.

The study abstract is at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07334648211023681.