Minnesota has reached an important milestone: there are now one million seniors living in our state. Even though we knew this day was coming, policymakers are seemingly unprepared to make important decisions and provide the quality care all of our seniors deserve.
Our state is facing an unprecedented care crisis. The number of seniors is outpacing the number of qualified caregivers. It’s been a problem for years and only made worse by the stresses of the pandemic and workforce shortages. The Legislature plays a significant role in determining how much to pay for long-term care. With pandemic-era care cost rising and significant wage pressure, many aging services providers can’t make ends meet. Despite sounding the alarm bells that funding is critical to our ability to recruit and retain caregivers to ensure access to care for Minnesota’s seniors, the requests have gone unanswered.
When wages for our professional caregivers are held flat, aging services settings are at an overwhelming competitive disadvantage. We have little hope of filling the 23,000 open caregiver positions currently available, forcing many seniors to be turned away.
Waiting for another session to address the issues facing us now will result in the closure of even more aging services settings and reduce access to care for seniors. We must act now; caring for seniors isn’t political. In a recent survey, Democrats, Republicans and Independents agreed elderly services is a top issue for places where the state should provide more funding. With a massive budget surplus, now is the time for Minnesota to make critical investments for our seniors.
Caring for older loved ones is a responsibility and a Minnesota value. We don’t have time to wait, we must act now.
— Roman Bloemke is chief operations officer for Woodstone Senior Living and Welcome Home Management.
