When Caregivers Need Care, Hospitals are Responding

Some medical centers are recognizing caregivers as essential, offering training, counseling and resources that extend beyond discharge

Paul Wynn,

AARP

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Published January 29, 2026

a hand coming out of a hospital helping two people

Vidhya Nagarajan

Over five years, Robert Tisdale’s mother was hospitalized nearly a dozen times due to the relentless progression of dementia, kidney failure, diabetes and other chronic illnesses. Each visit to a regional hospital in northern New Jersey brought new clinicians, forms and crises. The system often felt bureaucratic and fragmented.

Although individual clinicians and hospital staff made efforts to connect, Tisdale continued to feel isolated as his mother’s primary caregiver, bearing the full burden of coordination and responsibility once care moved beyond the hospital walls. "I was occassionally asked by hospital staff if 'I was okay,' but was really left to manage the caregiving burden on my own," says Tisdale.

His experience reflects the reality for millions of family caregivers, underscoring what hospitals are slowly recognizing: Effective care extends beyond the patient and must also include support for the caregivers who serve as the vital backbone for the health care system.

Across the country, a growing number of hospitals are beginning to position themselves as partners not only to patients, but also to family members managing increasingly complex care at home. While the American Hospital Association annual survey does not track these programs, hospital-based caregiver support remains scattered and largely out of reach outside major metropolitan centers, leaving many suburban and rural caregivers with limited access to similar support.

Hospitals are relative latecomers to this work. For decades, caregiver support has largely existed in communities, delivered through Area Agencies on Aging and other local organizations across the states. “Hospitals are not leading these efforts. They are catching up to decades of caregiving support that has existed in the community,” says Kathleen Kelly, executive director of the Family Caregiver Alliance in San Francisco.

Kelly notes that hospitals’ interest in supporting caregivers gained traction when the data showed it could reduce repeat hospitalizations and emergency visits. One study showed that Medicare patients who received caregiver support had shorter hospital stays and were less likely to require discharge to skilled nursing facilities, home health services or post-hospitalization care, resulting in an estimated $514 million in Medicare savings.

Support services range from libraries with caregiver-specific resources to more advanced hospital-based offerings, including psychotherapy, post-discharge training and peer support through volunteers or caregiver groups, designed to address the distinct challenges caregivers face across high-demand conditions such as dementia, heart disease, cancer and organ transplantation.

Kelly cautions that many of these programs rely on philanthropy or large endowments, limiting their scalability and leaving caregiver support programs “more symbolic than systemic” across most medical centers.

Caregiver program designed for nationwide expansion

When psychologist Allison Applebaum arrived at New York’s Mount Sinai in 2024, she brought with her a model of care that had quietly reshaped how one of the nation’s leading cancer centers treated family caregivers. Now, for the first time, Mount Sinai is offering caregivers across all illnesses access to mental health care, recognizing that caregivers are not invisible extensions of patients, but patients in their own right.

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At the center of this effort is the newly launched Steven S. Elbaum Family Center for Caregiving, housed within Mount Sinai’s Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine. The Elbaum Center builds on Applebaum’s groundbreaking work as founding director of the Caregivers Clinic at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the first program of its kind in any U.S. cancer center.

The program at Mount Sinai offers caregivers a structured pathway to care: brief intake screening, a comprehensive psychological assessment and a tailored treatment plan delivered by trained clinicians. Services include individual psychotherapy, caregiver communication skills training, couples and family sessions focused on caregiving decisions, medication management when needed, and most recently, specialized caregiver support groups, including dementia behavior management and coping skills training.

Most importantly, caregivers are formally registered as patients within the Mount Sinai system, allowing services to be billed through insurance, an innovation Applebaum argues is essential if caregiver support is ever to become standard care rather than an optional add-on.

While the center is still in its infancy, its ambitions are national. In partnership with the Center to Advance Palliative Care, Mount Sinai recently released a public tool kit designed to help other health systems replicate the model. Applebaum and colleagues from the University of Alabama have also secured federal funding to train hundreds of cancer centers nationwide to build similar caregiver support programs, an effort aimed at closing the long-standing gap between what research shows caregivers need and what health systems actually provide.

“When caregivers are supported, patients do better and health systems function better. That’s the case we’re making at Mount Sinai, and the model that we’re sharing across the country with other hospital systems,” says Applebaum, professor and director of the Elbaum Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Caring for cancer caregivers

In addition to Memorial Sloan Kettering, another nationally ranked health system, MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, has recognized caregivers as essential members of the care team. Christa Poole, director of social work , emphasizes that cancer affects not only patients but everyone who supports them. “It’s critical that health care organizations extend support and services, not just for patients but also to caregivers,” she says.

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MD Anderson’s social work department has long included caregivers in patient care, but in recent years, the institution has formalized programs to meet caregivers’ unique emotional and practical needs. One such program, myCancerConnection, pairs patients and caregivers with trained community volunteers who have navigated similar cancer journeys and offer peer support and guidance. In 2024, nearly 400 matches were made between caregivers or patients seeking support from a volunteer.

The center also offers a virtual caregiver support group, open to all caregivers regardless of the patient’s diagnosis, facilitated by social workers. Additional resources include spiritual care, art therapy and other spaces designed to help caregivers recharge.

“Our goal is to wrap support around both patients and caregivers so they don’t feel they’re going through this journey alone,” Poole says. “By formalizing caregiver support, we aim to normalize the recognition of caregivers as vital to patient outcomes, offering emotional, practical and peer-to-peer assistance every step of the way.”

Poole stresses the need for sustainability and accessibility: Caregiver support services are included in patient care at no extra cost and are available at both the main campus and regional sites. Caregivers may also be connected to community resources or longer-term counseling if needed.

Chicago: a city of hope for caregivers

Launched in 2019, Rush University Medical Center’s program was created to recognize and support family caregivers as integral members of a patient’s care team. Managed by social worker Diane Mariani, the Caring for Caregivers program offers individualized, one-on-one support through needs assessments, counseling sessions and connections to community resources.

Rush’s program was initially developed and expanded through philanthropic grants, and is currently funded by the John A. Hartford Foundation to raise awareness of caregivers and expand the model to multiple health systems and other organizations throughout the country. The program is sustained through billable clinical services delivered by licensed social workers, allowing Rush to embed caregiver support into routine health care while offsetting operational costs. Caregivers can be referred through hospital providers, outpatient clinics or self-referral, and the number of sessions typically range from one to five but can extend as needed.

“Our goal has always been twofold: to change the culture within health care so caregivers are recognized and valued, and to provide direct, personalized support that meets their unique needs,” says Mariani. “Health care systems naturally focus on the patient in front of them. We want to shift that mindset — to see and support the caregiver as an essential part of the care team.”

In addition to individualized support, Rush offers two support groups, one in English and Spanish, for families of those with memory loss. The program also serves as a national model, providing training and guidance for other health systems to embed caregiver support into standard practice. Mariani describes it as part of a larger movement to integrate caregiver-focused services across health care, public health and aging networks.

Joyce Teasley, 92, lives independently in Chicago despite a recent Alzheimer’s diagnosis, glaucoma and a history of hospitalizations at Rush. Her daughter, Robertha McNeil, 65, is her primary caregiver, navigating the complexities of aging, chronic illness and dementia from nearby while balancing her own health challenges and family responsibilities.

Robertha McNeil is the primary caregiver to her mom

Robertha McNeil (left) is the primary caregiver to her mom, with support from her brother. McNeil has taken advantage of Rush University Medical Center's caregiver program run by dedicated social workers.

AARP (Courtesy McNeil 2, Getty Images)

Through her mother’s participation in an Alzheimer’s research program at Rush, McNeil was connected with the hospital’s caregiver support program. She attends one-on-one sessions with a social worker who provides guidance on anticipating her mother’s needs, navigating health care resources and planning for future care. “The sessions feel like counseling,” says McNeil, a retired school teacher. “The social worker listens, offers recommendations and connects me to services for my mom. It helps me focus on practical steps and care for myself too.”

McNeil also appreciates the program’s flexibility, which has allowed her to have more sessions than initially scheduled and to receive ongoing support. “The program has helped me understand what’s coming next for my mom and how to prepare without feeling overwhelmed.”

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Paul Wynn, a veteran health care writer, has spent over a decade immersed in the caregiving community, both as a family caregiver and as a journalist covering caregiving issues for national publications.