Washington, DC – The American Health Care Association and the National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL) today reiterated their commitment to combating the current workforce crisis in long term care, establishing AHCA/NCAL Long Term Care Career Center and urging Congress to work with providers to address the changes needed to ensure the labor force needed to care for America’s frail and elderly is in place.
“AHCA/NCAL has long recognized that the provision of high quality long term care and services is dependent upon a stable, well-trained workforce,” stated Bruce Yarwood, President and CEO of AHCA/NCAL. “As a founding member of the National Healthcare Career Network, we are committed to helping our profession attract the well-trained, qualified workforce needed to care for America’s frail, elderly and disabled.”
In a statement to the Senate Committee on Finance, for their hearing “Workforce Issues in Health Care Reform: Assessing the Present and Preparing for the Future,” Yarwood stated: Human contact is essential to treating long term care patients and residents, and you will never be able to replace the role that people play in providing long term care…However, America’s long term care system is currently suffering from a chronic supply and demand problem when it comes to our labor force.
The AHCA/NCAL Long Term Care Career Center will provide member companies with the only career network dedicated to linking more than 100 participating professional societies and healthcare job seekers to the jobs nursing facilities and assisted living communities are looking to fill.
“This initiative will also fill a needed gap, providing qualified candidates with a job board featuring healthcare employment opportunities,” Yarwood concluded. “We are committed to being a solution to the nation’s current healthcare workforce shortage as overcoming this shortage will have a tremendous positive impact on patient and resident care and services.”
The American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living (NCAL) represent nearly 11,000 non-profit and proprietary facilities dedicated to continuous improvement in the delivery of professional and compassionate care provided daily by millions of caring employees to 1.5 million of our nation's frail, elderly and disabled citizens who live in nursing facilities, assisted living residences, subacute centers and homes for persons with mental retardation and developmental disabilities. For more information, please visit www.ahca.org or www.ncal.org.