Family Caregiving Time Summary year ending 2023 - 2024 01 17

 

As I work to understand the impact of family caregiving on my family and my household, I have divided the cost into to two categories: Time and Material. Time refers to the cost of time providing caregiving service to my mother, the amount of time we are spending to look after her. Material refers to the non-time tangible costs, these include property cost, lost wage earning, and other lost revenue cost, as well as other tangible expenditures resulting from providing a fully serviced family caregiving bed to the healthcare system.

In 2023 my family caregiving service was responsible for 8761 hours of caregiving for my Mom (1 extra hour to account for daylight savings). We were 100% responsible for staffing Mom's home-based living space. This included a requirement to have someone sleeping over with Mom every night.

My caregiving time on duty for the year totalled 6,127 hours, or 70% of the overall amount of caregiving time required. This averaged to 511 hours a month. The rest of the time was covered by siblings and my son, who is able to come and stay overnight a couple of weekends a month for a modest honorarium.

Our family experience from 2023 begs the questions, 

"What is a reasonable expectation of families to provide critical healthcare infrastructure at their own cost for time and materials?" 

"What are the resources that would be flowing to a commensurate institutional bed occupied by a frail elder with complex health requirements like my mother?" 

"Is there such a thing as a commensurate institutional care setting that can replicate the quality and comfort of a home-based care setting or should we calculate the extra value of intangible well-being for staying at home cared by family?" 

"How do we value and support the care that is being delivered in family caregiving settings?"

There are many more questions coming up for me as I look at these numbers and think about where we are at and what is coming in 2024. I know there are many others grappling with the same issues and different questions.

I hope these numbers can bolster our efforts for significant system change and value propositions to re-distribute resources where they will have the greatest impact.



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