National Family Caregiver Month

November is National Family Caregiver Month. Caregivers may be parents, spouses, siblings, adult children, neighbors or close friends. Whomever they are, they deserve to be recognized, thanked and celebrated. National Family Caregivers Month is a time to recognize that family caregivers wear many hats including “nurse,” financial manager, “psychologist,” chef, housekeeper, driver, grocery shopper, medical appointment companion, and medication guide. Now is the time to thank the 43.5 million family caregivers for the $470 billion dollars’ worth of unpaid care they selflessly provide annually. For all these reasons, we celebrate caregivers and echo the sentiment of the Presidential Proclamation on National Family Caregivers Month 2019.

Every month of the year, not just November, could be deemed National Family Caregiver Month. Caregivers need and deserve continued support. What they don’t need is added anxiety and uncertainty from untested Medicare payment models that could jeopardize patient access to care close to home, increase patients’ out of pocket costs, undermine personalized patient treatment plans and burden family caregivers. Join Patients and Providers United in telling policymakers to keep patients, providers, and caregivers at the center of medical decision making.