When one family member becomes incapacitated, the entire household loses its balance—a stark reality facing countless families today.Statistics show that by the end of 2019, China had 176 million people aged 65 and above, including over 40 million elderly with full or partial disability. By 2050, the elderly population is projected to peak at 487 million, with 92.53 million disabled individuals. Ensuring dignified living conditions for the disabled has become an urgent societal challenge.
Expansion of Long-Term Care Insurance Faces Insufficient Medical Service Capacity
As a social insurance system safeguarding the basic living needs of the disabled, long-term care insurance is often referred to as the "sixth pillar" of social security, designed to mitigate the pressures of an aging population. This insurance covers expenses incurred when individuals, due to old age, illness, or disability, require specialized care at home or in nursing facilities to manage daily living activities or medical treatment.Simply put, it provides basic care services—such as hair washing, face washing, feeding, and other daily assistance—along with medical care like pressure ulcer dressing changes and catheter management to insured individuals who pass disability assessments. The goal is to alleviate the administrative and financial burdens of long-term care for severely disabled individuals and their families.
China launched pilot programs for long-term care insurance in 2016. By the end of 2019, the national enrollment reached 88.54 million people, with 426,000 beneficiaries receiving benefits.In September 2020, the National Healthcare Security Administration and the Ministry of Finance issued the "Guiding Opinions on Expanding the Pilot Program for the Long-Term Care Insurance System," adding 14 new pilot cities. Long-term care insurance is becoming increasingly accessible to the general public, offering timely relief for the disabled.
Long-term care insurance services are broadly categorized into four types: first, placing individuals with disabilities in care institutions; second, home care provided by trained family members or caregivers; third, home care services delivered by care institutions through home visits; and fourth, community services offered by specialized community organizations. The long-term care insurance fund covers eligible care expenses, with reimbursement rates generally capped at around 70%.
In practice, most elderly individuals in China still prefer traditional home-based care. This implies that home-visit services from care facilities will become the primary service type under long-term care insurance. However, the current shortage of designated medical care institutions, lack of professional caregivers, and inadequate medical care service capacity necessitate institutional improvements to expand care facility capacity and address the lag in developing the elderly care service system.
Long-Term Planning Accelerates National Strategic Deployment of Care Stations
Auntie Sun, a 74-year-old resident of Beijing's Shijingshan District, became bedridden after undergoing surgery for cerebral infarction. She also suffers from multiple conditions including diabetes, osteoarthritis, and lumbar disc herniation, and has been assessed by professional institutions as having severe functional impairment.Elderly individuals like Auntie Sun require long-term care services. With a monthly pension of approximately 3,000 yuan, neither residing in a care facility nor hiring professional caregivers is financially sustainable for her family.
This year, Auntie Sun applied for and received Long-Term Care Insurance (LTCI) benefits. She now receives in-home care services from Beijing Meixin Nursing Station, a designated LTCI provider. From the available service options, Auntie Sun selected the therapeutic care services she needed most: blood glucose monitoring, vital sign measurement, pressure ulcer prevention guidance, and risk prevention counseling. The LTCI fund has significantly reduced both her family's financial burden and the burden of providing care.
Image: Beijing Meixin Nursing Station
Beijing Meixin Nursing Station, a medical care institution under Gold Nurse, provides professional nursing services for elderly individuals with disabilities or partial disabilities, chronic disease patients, post-operative recovery patients, and those requiring long-term care.Since its establishment in 2015, Gold Nurse has pioneered an OMO (Online-Merge-Offline) service model. While developing an online nursing service information platform, it has also established Meixin Medical chain nursing stations offline. This innovative "nursing station + senior care hub" operational model integrates online and offline services to extend "medical care, nursing, rehabilitation, and elderly care"to communities and households. This initiative strives to establish a "Capital Model" for integrated home-based medical and elderly care, delivering comprehensive "medical care, nursing, rehabilitation, and elderly care" services to the senior population.
Among service recipients, cases like Auntie Sun's are not uncommon, where financial constraints hinder access to quality healthcare.Beijing Meixin Nursing Station, integrated with the Long-Term Care Insurance program, serves as a designated care provider for the disabled. Most costs are covered by the insurance, effectively resolving the issues of insufficient willingness and ability to pay among the elderly.
Currently, with insufficient medical facilities, community and home-based care models offer advantages like low cost, broad coverage, and convenient services—better suited to China's national conditions. Long-term care insurance policies may increasingly favor these approaches. Responding to growing societal demand and policy trends, Gold Medal Nurse accelerated nationwide expansion of its chain nursing stations in 2020, guided by the "Capital Model" of integrated home-based medical and nursing care.
Reporters learned that Gold Nurse has established 11 chain care stations in its Beijing headquarters, making it the largest chain care provider in the city. Simultaneously, targeting regions expected to implement long-term care insurance pilot policies, the company is accelerating the construction of care facilities nationwide. Currently, five care stations are under development in cities including Tianjin and Hohhot.
Image: Gold Nurse assists elderly individuals with multi-parameter monitoring including vital signs, weight, and body fat.Gold Medal Nurse leverages its offline chain of medical care stations as hubs for integrated home medical and elderly care services and information. By embedding health monitoring systems across multiple scenarios, it collects and transmits multidimensional data to generate dynamic health profiles and establish personal health databases. This approach breaks down fragmented industry data silos, providing critical data support for intelligent analysis and proving vital for exploring effective health intervention models.
Image: Gold Nurse assists seniors with multi-parameter monitoring including vital signs, weight, and body fat.
Simultaneously, comprehensive analysis of massive datasets through big data technology enables data-driven precision decision-making for enterprises and governments. This builds a new smart elderly care model that precisely matches supply and demand, efficiently optimizes resource allocation, and promotes the proactive development of the smart health and elderly care industry.
In 2020, China's smart health and elderly care industry surpassed 4 trillion yuan in scale. Projections indicate that by 2030, the nation's elderly care sector could reach 22 trillion yuan, emerging as a new battleground for social capital.Gold Medal Nurse took a proactive five-year lead in strategic planning, establishing an integrated service system that combines "medical care with elderly care, services with hardware, and online with offline." This approach effectively addresses the challenge of matching supply and demand in smart elderly care services, accumulating a leading advantage and valuable experience.Moving forward, Gold Nurse will invest substantial capital and manpower to advance nationwide nursing station construction in alignment with long-term care insurance policies. This will solidify the foundation for implementing smart health and elderly care service systems, providing effective solutions to address China's aging society health challenges.