Elderly care does not leave the "home" to open up the "last kilometer" of home-based elderly care services

Medical care services are becoming more and more "home"

The elderly table of Baiziwan Home community retirement service station in Chaoyang is lined up as soon as the meal is ready. In order to solve the problem of "difficult to eat" for the elderly at home, this year, Beijing plans to develop 1,000 pension assistance meals in the retirement station, so that the elderly can eat high-quality and inexpensive "warm heart meals" at their doorstep.

"Here is close to home, seven or eight minutes can be reached, dining, entertainment, health monitoring and other services are available." In case of emergency, make a phone call, the staff can come to the door in three to five minutes." Gaofu (a pseudonym), a 76-year-old old man in Hexi District, Tianjin, has felt the convenience of retirement at home. In Hexi District, home-based care centers like this one, with a radiation radius of 15 minutes and 700 meters on foot, have covered many communities.

From the help meal to the quarter hour elderly care service circle, it can be seen that the connotation of home elderly care services is becoming more and more rich and the content is more and more solid.

Compared with the needs of meals, cultural entertainment and spiritual care, the combination of medical care and nursing has always been the most difficult breakthrough point to improve the quality of home-based elderly care. That, too, is changing. More and more elderly people who are semi-disabled or severely disabled have passed the assessment and obtained the qualification of government-subsidized family nursing beds, and have enjoyed the high-level and standardized care services of the institution at home. Some comprehensive insurance groups with elderly care characteristics make full use of their resource advantages, extend their services to the community and home, and open up green channels by setting up street care stations and other operation methods, docking medical resources to the elderly who need door-to-door service.

Intelligent management system was introduced in Xinhong Street, Minhang District, Shanghai. Lu Shengyu, 91, shows an emergency call device at his home. Photo by Wang Xiang/Xinhua News Agency

In addition, with the vigorous development of new technologies such as the Internet of Things, 5G, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence, home-based elderly care services have also caught the "wisdom express". "Wearing a smart bracelet on my hand, I can not only monitor my sleep, blood pressure, heart rate, blood oxygen and other health indicators at any time, but also two emergency call buttons, in case of emergencies, I can call the community staff at any time." Liu Dama, who lives in Wuchang District, Wuhan, said excitedly.

New technologies such as "one-click call", "Care treasure", "SOS" emergency callers, and infrared body-sensing equipment have been developed and transformed by aging technology, and have gradually become a "good helper" for the elderly at home. From emergency calls to full-time monitoring, the sense of security of home care has increased, and the timeliness and precision of home health care services has also improved.

To be continued: Future development exploration "on the road"

Home care for the elderly has carried out a lot of active and effective exploration in cracking the degree of professionalism, standardization and coverage. However, some issues concerning sustainable operating mechanisms still need to be further promoted.

For example, although the elderly assistance meal is cheap, many elderly people who have the need for food delivery can only "look at the meal and sigh." "It's not that I don't want to facilitate the elderly, it's just that I have the heart to be powerless." It is very difficult to cover the overhead without the cost. In addition to the lack of manpower, if you ask for a special delivery, the cost will be higher." Some people in charge of retirement stations to the People's Daily network reporter bluntly.

In order to crack the "last kilometer" of assisted meals, some areas in Beijing have begun to try the digitalization of assisted meals for the elderly, and the stations participating in the pilot have signed a contract with the delivery platform to screen suppliers such as restaurants that meet the standards within 3 kilometers around the station to provide "take-out" assisted meals for the elderly.

For another example, although the family elderly care beds that are currently being widely built around the country are popular, in order to encourage qualified and qualified institutions and organizations to fully participate in the construction of family elderly care beds, the current family elderly care beds basically rely on financial subsidies.

A relevant government official admitted that relying on financial subsidies is not a long-term solution, because it is a continuous investment, so it is necessary to slowly guide the elderly to consume and buy services. In the future, we can explore the market operation mechanism managed by professional institutions to form a healthy development model and benefit more elderly people.