IMPACT OF INFORMAL CAREGIVING ON WORK PRODUCTIVITY

Baltimore, MD – As the population ages, more working adults are be providing informal care to a chronically ill older relative, however this informal care-giving may result in a 20% loss of work productivity for each employed caregiver.

In response to the growing number of employed caregivers, employers have been implementing workplace based programs aimed at supporting caregivers and reducing lost productivity due to caregiver, however more research is needed to determine the cost-effectiveness of such programs.

The Work Productivity and Activity Impairment (WPAI) questionnaire is a seven item questionnaire which has been used extensively to measure the impact of chronic illness on work productivity, and establish cost-effectiveness of disease-specific interventions.  A recent study, “Construct Validity of the Work Productivity and Activity Impairment Questionnaire across Informal Caregivers of Chronically Ill Older Patients,” published in Value in Health, validates the adapted WPAI:Care-giver questionnaire to measure the impact of informal care-giving to disabled older adults on work productivity and regular productivity.  This study was co-authored by Erin R. Giovannetti, Jennifer L. Wolff, Kevin D. Frick, and Chad Boult of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Says Dr. Giovannetti, “This measure could facilitate research on the cost-effectiveness of workplace caregiver interventions and give employers and policy experts a more accurate estimate of the cost to employers and society of informal care-giving”

This will be discussed in detail in a future issue of Value in Health, the official journal of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and outcomes Research.

Value in Health (ISSN 1098-3015) publishes papers, concepts, and ideas that advance the field of pharmacoeconomics and outcomes research and help health care leaders to make decisions that are solidly evidence-based.  The journal is published bi-monthly and has a regular readership of over 4,000 clinicians, decision-makers, and researchers worldwide.

ISPOR is a nonprofit, international organization that strives to translate pharmacoeconomics and outcomes research into practice to ensure that society allocates scarce health care resources wisely, fairly, and efficiently.

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