Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine told a meeting of the Senate Health Committee Tuesday that more needs to be done to encourage health professionals to specialize in caring for seniors.
“Within the next two years, our seniors will outnumber our children,” she says.
Collins says the rest of the country will reach that milestone by 2035.
She says less than one percent of the doctors and nurses are getting certified in geriatric care, and she is co-sponsoring legislation to provide for more health care providers to be certified in geriatrics. The measure would provide over $50 million a year for five years to bolster training.
“We want to build a workforce to provide geriatric care and ensure that older adults and their families in rural areas are provided the resources that they need to care for aging loved ones,” Collins says.
