Jobs in home care are expected to grow by 40 percent in the next decade to meet demand from older adults and people with disabilities. Despite being part of one of the fastest growing industries, many home care workers did not have federal minimum wage and overtime protections until 2015. The Department of Labor extended these protections through a regulation known as the Home Care Rule. We compar...

We make more than 1,000 recommendations annually to help improve government. We alert department heads to the recommendations that can save the most money, address issues on our High Risk List, or significantly improve their operations. This report outlines our 55 priority open recommendations for HHS as of April 2020. For example, HHS should work with its interagency biodefense team to document...

People whose disabilities keep them from working can apply for Social Security Disability Insurance. People who claim these benefits may also be on prescription opioids for chronic pain. Opioids are addictive and can be misused. Social Security staff must deny claims if claimants who stopped using drugs or alcohol would be employable. Staff in 5 of 6 offices we visited were confused about when to...

Federal and state Medicaid spending on behavioral health services—mental health and substance use treatments—is projected to be $71 billion in 2017. However, some adults on Medicaid may have limited access to inpatient or residential behavioral health care because Medicaid generally doesn't cover services for adults in institutions for mental disease. Officials in the 6 states we reviewed tr...

More children die of injury each year than from all other causes combined. When children are severely injured in an event such as a car crash, where do they go to get care? Although most traumatic injuries are treated in hospital emergency departments, hospitals may not have the resources needed to treat injured children. For example, they may lack specially sized medical equipment. Pediatric tra...

The use of electronic health information can allow providers to more efficiently share information and give patients easier access to their health information, among other benefits. Nonetheless, systems storing and transmitting health information in electronic form are vulnerable to cyber-based threats. The resulting breaches—involving over 113 million records in 2015—can have serious adverse...

Federal data sources provide a broad picture of direct care workers—nursing assistants and home health, psychiatric, and personal care aides—who provide long-term services and supports (LTSS), but limitations and gaps affect the data's usefulness for workforce planning. Some states have collected data in areas where federal data are limited, but these have been one-time studies. Federal data s...

Several work-related factors may cause people to claim Social Security benefits early and suggest they may face challenges in continuing to work at older ages. For example, those who worked in physically-demanding blue collar jobs were 55 percent more likely to claim benefits prior to their full retirement age compared to those in all other occupations after controlling for other factors (see figu...

What the Participants SaidThe forum's participants described nanomanufacturing as a future megatrend that will potentially match or surpass the digital revolution's effect on society and the economy. They anticipated further scientific breakthroughs that will fuel new engineering developments; continued movement into the manufacturing sector; and more intense international competition.Although lim...

Overall, trends in dental coverage show little change from 1996 to 2010--around 62 percent of individuals had coverage. The percentage of the population with private dental coverage decreased from 53 to 50 percent. Dental coverage through Medicaid or the State Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which was established in 1997, rose from 9 to 13 percent. The increase was due primarily to an...