China will lowerthe market access threshold for all nursing home ownerships, improve communityfacilities for at-home nursing for the elderly and train more nursingprofessionals for the sector to expand services and provide more employmentopportunities.

Experts saidforeign and private investors will have new opportunities as the market forelderly care expands to enhance services and boost quality.

The decision,adopted on Nov 28 at an executive meeting of the State Council, presided overby Premier LiKeqiang, was to help meet diversedemands of the increasing number of elderly people in the country, according toa statement.

Four measures wereapproved at the meeting, including encouraging local authorities to usemultiple channels to effectively increase nursing services. Public nursinghomes will provide free or low-cost services to those who are in economicdifficulties or with only one child.

New residentialcomplexes will install elderly nursing facilities and old complexes will berenovated with such amenities. Professional institutions will be supported torun these facilities. Meanwhile, the training for professional elderly nursingworkers will be strengthened.

The meeting alsodecided to strengthen cross-department supervision, with compulsory nationalstandards on service quality and firefighting facilities to be installed.

Over the years,the elderly population has become an increasingly serious problem for China.Last year, the country had 158.31 million people age 60 or older, while peopleolder than 65 accounted for 11.4 percent of the population, according to theNational Statistics Bureau. In 2017, the number of people older than 65 inChina went up by 5.5 percent.

The peak isestimated to fall around 2050 when China’s elderly population is expectedto hit 487 million, which will account for more than one-third of thepopulation.

For DangJunwu, deputy director of the China Research Center onAging, the meeting specifically targeted major problems that curbed thedevelopment of the elderly nursing sector over the years, such as firefightingfacilities.

If properlycarried out, these new measures can increase the number of legal nursinginstitutions as well as the number of elderly people living in theseinstitutions, Dang said. In the next step, specific rules should be released onland use, cooperation between hospitals and elderly nursing institutions, andeasier medical reimbursement that can help reduce costs for patients, he said.

Dang’sviewpoint was echoed by CaoBingliang, deputypresident of the China Silver Industry Association. Cao said China’straditional elderly care is changing in the context of smaller family sizes andan aging population, which demands diverse services such as at-home nursing.

According to areport released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 2016, the marketvalue for elderly nursing is estimated to be worth 13 trillionyuan($1.87 trillion) by 2030.

In 2015, theMinistry of Civil Affairs and the National Development and Reform Commissionjointly released a guideline to encourage private capital to invest in theelderly nursing market, including at-home nursing, in-community nursing andprofessional institutions.

The Ministry ofCivil Affairs said that the country had 155,000 elderly nursing institutionsand facilities last year, up by 10.6 percent year-on-year. The number of bedsclimbed to 7.44 million, an increase of 2 percent year-on-year.

However, afive-year plan on elderly nursing, released by the State Council in Februarylast year, pointed out problems such as an in-balance in elderly servicesbetween rural and urban areas, insufficient supply of such services and ashortage of professionals.

Foreign investmentcan be introduced under the lower market access threshold that will provideincreasing opportunities to tap the potential of the Chinese market, Dang said.So far, there are no leading Chinese brands in this field, and foreigncompanies can work with local partners, he said.

Source:https://appen.media.gov.cn/engovdata/goven/201812/04/447044/article.html