As the first of the nation's 78 million baby boomers begin reaching age 65 in 2011, they will face a health care workforce that is too small and woefully unprepared to meet their specific health needs. Retooling for an Aging America calls for bold initiatives starting immediately to train all health care providers in the basics of geriatric care and to prepare family members and other informal caregivers, who currently receive little or no training in how to tend to their aging loved ones. The book also recommends that Medicare, Medicaid, and other health plans pay higher rates to boost recruitment and retention of geriatric specialists and care aides. Educators and health professional groups can use Retooling for an Aging America to institute or increase formal education and training in geriatrics. Consumer groups can use the book to advocate for improving the care for older adults. Health care professional and occupational groups can use it to improve the quality of health care jobs.

"In this book, the editors review the status of today's fragmented rural long-term care system and trace the trends in its philosophy, policies, and programs. The chapters progress from an analysis of the constraints and shortcomings of access to focus on remedies and strategies for improving care and delivery of services. The book includes a set of seven guiding principles and a series of specific programmatic recommendations for enhancing rural long-term care as we move into the 21st century." "The contributors, whose research was supported by the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR), represent collective expertise in health policy research, sociology, nursing, rural medicine, and management."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This book describes a wide-ranging set of research approaches which have been used to study the health care problems of adults living in rural areas. It shows how these approaches can be used to define health care problems, measure levels of illness and health, and evaluate health care practices. For each approach, contributors provide a theoretical background from the health care delivery literature, details of how it can be carried out in the field, its strengths and weaknesses, and illustrative examples from both the literature and their own work.