While there is no preexisting information to fully answer your question, we've used the available data to pull together key findings: the percentage of informal and family caregivers coordinating care behaviors for elderly Medicare beneficiaries, the impact of cognitive impairment on the difficulty of care tasks and responsibilities, and the difficulties reported by caregivers when researching health issues among other healthcare tasks.
Below you'll find an outline of our research methodology to better understand why the information you've requested is publicly unavailable, as well as a deep dive into our findings.
METHODOLOGY
To answer your question, I searched for academic/medical studies, industry reports and surveys among caregivers for elderly people in the US. While I found several studies that address prevalence and difficulty of several (but not all) care behaviors listed in Column B of the attached spreadsheet, these vary in terms of methodology and intervening factors e.g. cognitive impairment, dementia, etc. such as to affect the parity and consistency of data. Therefore, I opted to present my findings in this response format instead of encoding inconsistent data into the spreadsheet. The bulk of my findings come from the US National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health database. Please continue below to see the results of my research. Families Caring for an Aging America (2016)
The survey results of the 2016 book "Families Caring for an Aging America" published by the National Academy of Sciences gives the most relevant findings I could find for this topic. Figure 3.3 below provides the percentage of informal and family caregivers coordinating care behaviors for elderly Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 and above in the U.S.
•"Help care recipient take shots or injections: 7.8%
• Help manage medical tasks: 10.6%
• Help with skin care wounds: 23.2%
• Help add or change health insurance: 25.2%
• Help with special diet: 27.4%
• Help with other health insurance matters: 33.6%
• Help keep track of meds: 48.6%
• Help speak to medical provider: 54.9%
• Help make medical appointments: 60.5%"
While the book also mentions other tasks such as in Table 3.1 'What Family Caregivers Do for Older Adults', and Table 3.2 'Type and Frequency of Family Caregiver Tasks... by Care Recipient's Dementia Status etc.", these do not indicate prevalence percentage or difficulty. Also, Table 3.2 involves elderly dementia as a factor in care. Problems experienced by informal caregivers (2016)
The 2016 study ''Problems Experienced by Informal Caregivers with Older Care Recipients With and Without Cognitive Impairment" available in the U.S. National Library of Medicine also gives valuable information regarding difficulty of administering care. Table 2 in particular gives the percentage of prevalence regarding difficulty of caregiver tasks and responsibilities.
However, the reported difficulty of tasks depends on the cognitive impairment of the elderly. The tasks are categorized based on 'demand on informal caregiver', 'safety of care recipient', and 'social-relational problems'. These were then measured for prevalence based on presence of cognitive problem, difficulty and impact. Figure 2 shows that difficulty across all types of problems (care tasks, safety of care recipient, and social-relational) increased when cognitive impairment was present in the elder receiving care. Seniors and Caregivers – Online Survey (2012)
I also found this 2012 survey (the latest available) conducted by the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) about senior citizens and their caregivers. Relevant findings about difficulty in administering care revolved about finding information about health conditions (of the elder receiving care) and medication.
• 92% of interviewed caregivers say they sometimes get confused by physicians' recommendations. (p.9)
• 88% of interviewed caregivers say they sometimes get confused by bill received from physicians or insurance providers. (p.9)
• 94% of interviewed caregivers say they are not experts about prescription drugs and potential interactions. (p.9)
• 58% of interviewed caregivers say they find it difficult to visit multiple resources when researching a certain health issue (p.10)
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Here are additional materials for further reading:
Informal Caregivers in the United States: Prevalence, Caregiver Characteristics, and Ability to Provide Care - discusses prevalence of care giving itself, but with no specific care behaviors for the elderly
Caregivers for older adults: Prevalence, characteristics, and health care utilization and expenditures - discusses characteristics and needs of caregivers themselves but with no specific prevalence for care behaviors for the elderly
CONCLUSION
To wrap it up, despite the lack of comprehensive and uniform data about the prevalence and difficulty of caregiver tasks for elder recipients in the US, we've used available data to pull together key findings for your project. These include the percentage of informal and family caregivers coordinating care behaviors for elderly Medicare beneficiaries in 2016. We also found that presence of cognitive impairment in elders increase the difficulty of care tasks and responsibilities. Finally, informal caregivers report difficulties when researching health issues among other healthcare tasks.