The Commonwealth Fund and AcademyHealth "Building Bridges: Making a Difference in Long-Term Care 2006 Policy Conference" took place yesterday in Washington, DC. By all accounts it was a great success.

The room was crowded beyond capacity, but thanks to the wonders of technology you can view it as a webcast. The Kaiser Family Foundation has it available for free here. Highly recommended viewing for everyone.

Here is the take home message slide from the presentation by Randall Brown of Mathematica on the Cash & Counseling Demonstration. It's very compelling, with just about every indicator showing better outcomes for the consumers receiving care via the consumer direction option (a group made up of both younger disabled individuals and elders).

From my reading of it, the final bullet point might be rephrased as "reducing informal caregiving burden could yield future savings." It will take intentional effort to reduce informal caregiving burden among the family caregivers.

The findings concerning the hired workers in the cash & counseling group -- who were mostly (80%) relatives of the clients -- are interesting. The informal caregivers:

The general consensus is that the hired workers' greater emotional strain is related to their existing relationship with the client as their relative. That finding, along with the lower take-up rate among elders, speak to the need for intensive education and support programs in broader person-directed care efforts within communities.