This is the first analysis to use a weighted, nationally representative sample of home health workers linked with agency-level data. The findings suggest that intention to leave the job may be reduced through policies that prevent injuries, improve consistency of client assignment, improve experiences among African American workers, and offer sufficient hours to workers who want them.

Home health and personal care aides are one of the largest groups of health care workers in the US, with nearly three million people providing direct care for people with serious illness living in the community. These home care workers face challenges in recruitment, training, retention, and regulation, and there is a lack of data and research to support evidence-based policy change. Personal care aides receive little formal training, and they experience low pay and a lack of respect for the skill required for their jobs. High turnover and occupational injury rates are widely reported. There is little research on the factors associated with higher-quality home care, the extent to which worker training affects client outcomes, and how regulations affect access to and quality of home care. Health care leaders should seek to fill these gaps in knowledge, support the establishment of training standards and programs, implement Medicaid reimbursement strategies that incentivize improvements in pay and working conditions, reform regulations that now prevent the full utilization of home care workers, and create sustainable career pathways in home care policies.

Home health, home care, and personal care aides provide most of the paid hands-on care delivered to seriously ill, functionally impaired individuals in their homes, assisted living, and other noninstitutional settings. This workforce delivers personal care, assistance with activities of daily living, and emotional support to their patients. They are often the eyes and ears of the health system, observing subtle changes in condition that can provide important information for clinical decision making and therapeutic intervention. Despite this fact, the growing number of team-based home care initiatives have failed to incorporate this workforce into their programs. Barriers to inclusion of aides into teams include a basic lack of value and understanding on the part of clinical team members and society in general of the complex tasks that these caregivers perform, inadequate investments in training and education of this workforce to develop their knowledge and competencies, and variation in state delegation laws that limit the scope of practice and consequently the ability of aides to work effectively in teams and to advance in their careers. Building on the few programs that have successfully included aides as key members of home care teams, federal and state policymakers, educators, and health systems and providers should standardize competency-based training requirements, expand nurse delegation consistently across states, and support evaluation, dissemination, and replication of successful programs. J Am Geriatr Soc 67:S444-S448, 2019.

The demand for home health aides is expected to rise, despite concerns about the sustainability of this workforce. Home health workers receive low wages and little training and have high turnover. It is difficult to recruit and retain workers to improve clinical outcomes. This study presents national estimates to examine how home health workers and the subgroup of workers differ in terms of sociodemographic characteristics, compensation, benefits, satisfaction, and retention. Hospice aides fare better than other categories of workers and are less likely to leave their job. Policymakers should consider strategies to increase the quality and stability of this workforce.

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