Hcs 440 Medical Care for an Aging Population

Medical Care for an Aging Population

Brieanna Coverdell, Clint Noble, Carol Wimberly-Evans

HCS/440

February 10, 2014

Jon Foskett

Medical Care for an Aging Population

Like many other countries of the world the United States is an aging country. The continued growth of the aging population in the United States will have an unprecedented impact on the healthcare system. The supply and demand of healthcare workers will be impacted mostly as large numbers of workers will retire/reduce their working hours and therefore causing a decrease in supply of healthcare workers (Center for Health Workforce Studies, March 2006).The healthcare demands from the older people will increase and therefore increasing demands in health services. It is estimated that Americans aged 65 and above were 35 million in the year 2000 but it is expected to rise to 54 million by 2020. By 2011 Baby boomers ushered in what appeared to be a huge change in health care demands (Quinn, 2014). As the population is aging, people are living longer than any other time in history and the nursing of the old age continues to face huge challenges as there is increase in staffing needs in the day to day practices. According to United States Census Bureau (N.D.), "The 85-and-older population grew by about 3 percent from 2011 to 2012, to almost 5.9 million. The number of centenarians grew to almost 62,000.” There seems to be greater demand now and for future in the gerontological nursing field. The ever increasing number of patients due to the continued ageing of the American society leads to increase in demand for nurses. This is because a sufficient number of nurses are required to relieve the workload involved in the field. Healthcare providers, colleges, and universities, plus nurses need to work collaboratively with government agencies to overcome the complex solutions in healthcare which are as a result of the ageing population. Despite the fact that the...