Editor's Note

How Your Business Can Care for Caregiver Customers

Caregivers need every ounce of support they can; your pharmacy should offer that help.

• By David Kopf
• Nov 01, 2017

Consider the true cost of being a caregiver. As a DME pharmacy, it’s important to do so, because chances are that many of your customers are actually family caregivers helping a family member or loved one.

Caring for aging or ailing family members, especially those with chronic conditions, can be rough. Actually, that’s putting it far too mildly. Providing regular, hands-on care to someone whose life is undergoing major changes radically alters your life in the process.

The crazy time demands, sleep deprivation, and running ragged is just the beginning of the scenario. Many family caregivers have to make far more significant sacrifices. They might have to table their careers in ways that make it hard for them to restart later on; they might have to move their parents in with them; or sell their homes and move in with their parents.

Numbers from the organization Caring Across Generations shed some light on this: There are 43.5 million family caregivers in the United States, who provide $470 billion dollars’ worth of care to their family members each year. Between 60 and 75 percent of those caregivers are women, and an estimated third of women in the workplace provide care to a relative or spouse at during their career.

This is a key opportunity for your DME pharmacy to act as an engaged resource for caregivers in your community. Consider providing resource directories, product bundles that can help the people for whom these clients are caring, and establish referral relationships with various agencies and services that might help these people. Also, perhaps consider hosting education events that can combine all these resources under one roof. These caregivers will deeply value the kind of help you can offer.

This article originally appeared in the DME Pharmacy November 2017 issue of HME Business.