This training program for old age medicine survived. for now.

Paula Saint

In Saint Lewis, a team of students on a Van Van visits high -equipped high -equipped visits, a nursing house, a church, and other sites, and learn to make comprehensive reviews around the clock.

The team – future doctors, social workers, psychologists and healers – is looking for common problems such as weakness, muscle weakness and cognitive decline. Patients who reside, free of charge, receive printed plans to help direct their care.

Throughout the state of Oregon, health workers in the community have joined an online training program for eight hours-with departments on medical care and medical aid, and tilted care, communication with patients and families-to help them work with the elderly.

“We need these public health workers on the front lines to learn how to provide elderly care,” said Laura Perley, an aging specialist at Oregon University of Health and Science, who leads her efforts.

In Luisville, the same condemnation of the Federalism provides aging medicine training throughout Kentucky. Sometimes, though, it requires less formal approach.

Sam Cotton, a social worker who runs the dementia program, recently heard from a local Methodic Church whose diocese was interested in their relatives. Can anyone talk to the group about this shocking role? Cotton, assistant professor at the University of Luisville, said that she will be there.

These programs, and 39 more like them Throughout the country, it aims to address an anxious reality: the number of old agents and other health care doctors has failed to keep up with the growing population between the ages of 65 and over.

Since 2015, the Congress has authorized funding for the workforce improvement program in aging medicine, or GWEP, which trains about 70,000 people per year.

Recently, these scholarships have appeared to universities and hospitals, which amount to one million dollars for this year, endangered. In July, without warning or explaining, the annual payments of the recipient, some of which have participated since the program began in 2015, was dramatically reduced.

Instead of $ 41.8 million expected, the donors combined are 27.5 million dollars, which is a 34 % deficit, according to the Eldorcare workforce. More discounts appear to be coming.

The proposed budget for the Trump administration was canceled in 2026 GWep, as well as many other programs funded through the Department of Resources and Health Services, an agency in the Ministry of Health and Humanitarian Services.

Although the program has always been drawing support from the two parties, and He had been repeatedly authorized For a period of five years, the president’s budget led to its zero, noting “an attempt to simplify the bureaucracy, to reset the appropriate balance between federal responsibilities and state responsibilities, and provide taxpayer funds.”

With the passage of 10 weeks without clarification – was the lost money only delayed or went forever? The program managers called in a feverish form of Congress representatives, while thinking about the demobilization of the painful workers and an uncertain future.

“These funds were allocated, signed and seal, so where is it?” Koton said last month. In addition to her role in the Luisville program, she works as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Centers for Education Centers.

The questions of those granted to HRSA, the Finance Agency, brought a few answers. After that, on September 10, the programs discovered that, in mysterious circumstances that disappeared, the rest of the allocated money had suddenly achieved.

GWEP has been restored to each of the bills of the House of Representatives and the elders that finance the Federal Ministry of Health, although the bills can still change or vote – or that the ongoing decision may freeze the current financing.

The rescue may partially reflect the efforts of the strong GWEP supporter, Republican Senator Susan Collins, from Main, who is facing his re -election next year.

In a speech in the Senate on September 3, Collins described the program as “a modest investment that will help to ensure that the older Americans have the care of the experts they need, provide their care providers with training, and that other supportive employees and healthcare providers are receiving the skills they need.”

“The rotating ship was at the very least,” said Marla Berg Wajjer, co -director of GWEP at St. Louis University, who trained about 9,800 people annually.

The program’s managers found that the payments that were withheld for 10 weeks are equivalent to the amount allocated by each grant to training Alzheimer’s and dementia. The programs were asked to appoint $ 230,000 from a $ 1 million grant to train dementia for both professionals and members of society, but some chose to spend more and thus had a greater shortage.

For example, GWEP at Louisiana State University, for example, received only $ 152,000 from 976,659 dollars and (temporarily, manager) stopped all her aging courses and internal training in Louisiana and Messi.

What was happening? “All grants were accurately reviewed to ensure compatibility with the priorities of the administration,” the federal agency, who funds the programs, said in an email message.

“It is surprising to me that anyone will ask about the value of the existence of a working force with care for the elderly.”

She added, “Everyone in this field hoped that this program would grow, and not wither.”

The credits have increased only a little in recent years. However, “extremely tricks”, added Johnson. “Big Bang for the Buck” and smart use of federal resources.

The number of practitioners – 6580 this year is likely to decrease, according to HRSA estimates – a little in the coming years, even as this experience increases. It is difficult to attract medicine and doctors to a relatively low -wage specialization and whose patients are often secured by Medicare, although surveys have shown High job satisfaction Among the old agents.

Most older patients do not receive care not from old age doctors but primary care doctors, other medical professionals, doctors’ assistants, nurses, social workers, pharmacists, and direct care workers.

Accordingly, GWEPS emphasizes the expansion of knowledge about elders – whose risks, symptoms, goals and treatments often differ from those of younger patients – to a wide range of service providers, especially in rural areas and deprived organizations. They also educate patients themselves and family care providers.

For example, the Saint Louis University program recently presented a vocational training for the accredited nursing assistants, or CNAS, which works in a suburban nursing house.

“The rotation of the nursing house employees in general, and CNAS in particular, is very high,” Berg Wikar explained. These functions are often poorly wage and stress, and do not feed 75 hours of training required to obtain a deepest certificate in the special needs and characteristics of older patients.

Six women joined the first vocational training category, Sant Lewis, designed to accommodate 10 at the same time. Over the course of a year, they will get 144 hours of education on topics such as medications, preventing fall, and dementia.

The curriculum is characterized by personal classrooms with an aging products and an aging nurse practitioner, and more than 40 short video clips produced by the GWEP team. Berg Wikar said that their assistants “can watch their phones during rest periods.”

At the end of the year, graduates became a specialist in aging medicine and received a $ 1,000 salary of the program and an increase of 12 % of their employers. “Our plan is to present this to other facilities,” said Berg Wikr.

And to GWEPs in other states, if they survive.

The new aging is produced by partnership with New York Times.

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