What Dolly Parton Said in Her Last Interview Should Terrify Us

The caregiver is often the person standing in the clinic exam room with their loved one, doing the paperwork and answering questions on someone else’s behalf. Yet currently, they are invisible to our health care system. 

In my years as a cancer caregiver for my wife, taking her to dozens of appointments and treatments, I was never once asked how I was doing or how my health was holding up. Only 15% of caregivers have ever been asked by a health care provider how they are doing. Even on the mental-health side, clinicians still lack the diagnostic pathway to bill for supporting caregivers, so even if caregiver burden is documented, it’s not treated because it’s not billable. Our health care system can bill for almost anything these days, yet it cannot bill for one of the most common health exposures in American life.

What else would caregiver support look like?

If you know a caregiver, please stop texting, “let me know if you need anything.” An exhausted caregiver will never ask, and answering requires more work and inventing a task for you. Just name a day and a four-hour window, and show up. Bring food for them and take over the care duties for a few hours, so they can get a much-needed break to go watch a movie, go to their own doctor’s appointment, sit in a park, or take a nap.