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Gas Prices Ground Nurses: Home Health Care is Threatened

Soaring gas prices are driving some of North Carolina’s visiting nurses off the road. Others are refusing to take on new patients. The trend, service providers warn, could increase health care costs and force critically ill patients to leave home.

Naisha David, a nurse’s aide at Good Health Services in Raleigh, said she no longer accepts cases in Cary, Fuquay-Varina or Apex.

“Gas is just so high that you can’t afford to travel the distance, even though we may love what we do,” she said.

Sandi Massey, vice president of clinical services at Good Health Services, said her agency has lost employees to gas prices, especially at the agency’s Kenansville office in rural Duplin County.

“I’ve had people look at going to the hospital where they can actually stay for an eight-hour shift,” she said.

Home health workers and companions help patients remain independent, living at home instead of in costly retirement facilities or nursing homes.

Betty Klauber of Chapel Hill applied for companion services from the Chapel Hill-based A Helping Hand last spring after her husband, Sam, grew too frail to be left alone while she ran errands. She hopes her husband, who is 99, can stay at home for the rest of his life, and said the service is helping him do that.

“It’s just been a godsend for me,” she said.

But in interviews, directors of home health care agencies and trade groups warned that if the industry continues to lose workers, more patients – particularly those in rural areas – will end up in nursing facilities, driving up health care costs.

“We’re really going to have a problem,” said Amanda Thomas, director of research at the National Association for Home Care and Hospice. “It could be a huge trickle-down effect.”

The statewide average price of gas this week is $4.02 a gallon, up from $2.85 just a year ago, according to www.northcarolinagasprices.com. Nurse’s aides, who do the bulk of home visits under the state Medicaid home care program, typically earn between $9 and $10 an hour.

Christine Mair, a companion to elderly people and graduate student, drives hundreds of miles every week taking clients to lunch, to doctor visits and shopping.

Mair’s agency, the nonprofit A Helping Hand, provides companion services to 400 people each year in Orange, Durham, Chatham and Wake counties. It reimburses workers for driving clients on errands but not for travel to clients’ homes. Mair drives a fuel-efficient car with manual transmission, but she still pays up to $50 a week for gas to travel between her Raleigh home and clients in Pittsboro and Chapel Hill.

“It gets pricey,” she said.

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