Innovate and diversify geriatric medical care service models Explore extending in-hospital nursing services to communities and families

At 15:00 on May 11 (Saturday), the National Health Commission held a press conference in the press conference hall of Building 2 of the National Health Commission (No. 38, Beilishi Road, Xicheng District) to introduce the relevant situation of "developing the nurse team and optimizing nursing services" and answer questions from reporters. The following is the transcript of the press conference:

Picture of the press conference

China.com: The aging population in mainland China is deepening, and the elderly have an urgent need for nursing services. Thank you.

Xing Ruoqi, Deputy Director of the Department of Medical Affairs of the National Health Commission:

In order to accelerate the development of elderly care services, our committee identified 15 provinces and cities including Beijing in 2021 to take the lead in the trial, accumulate local experience, and achieve certain results. First of all, in terms of expanding the resources of medical services for the elderly, the number of nursing homes, nursing centers, nursing stations and other institutions in the pilot provinces has increased significantly through transformation or social forces, with an average increase of about 16%. Jiangsu Province, Shandong Province and other places have expanded the number of beds for elderly care in primary medical institutions, and Jiangsu Province has added the brand of nursing homes to community service centers, so as to provide better nursing services for the disabled and dementia and unable to take care of themselves in the community. At the same time, all localities have also increased the training of nurses and medical nurses specializing in geriatric nursing, effectively expanding the supply of geriatric nursing services. In terms of innovating and diversifying the geriatric medical care service model, the pilot provinces are also actively exploring the continuous extension of in-hospital nursing services to communities and families through door-to-door visits, day care centers, "call centers" or family beds, etc., so as to make nursing services more convenient and accessible. In terms of exploring the price payment policy for geriatric medical care, some provinces and cities organically combine the home medical care services for the elderly with local long-term care insurance policies, or develop commercial nursing insurance linked to long-term care insurance, etc., to provide supporting policy guarantees for the development of geriatric care services and benefit more elderly people.

In the next step, we will continue to increase the promotion of elderly care services, further expand the coverage of the pilot of elderly medical care services, promote the good experience and practices of local pilots, and drive the development of elderly medical care services across the country. First, the relevant pilot provinces can further expand the number of pilot cities, and we will also increase the coverage of the pilot in eligible provinces other than the pilot provinces. The second is to continue to increase the number of community multi-functional nursing institutions, day care centers and other institutions, and further expand the supply of diversified elderly care services. The third is to speed up the construction of the team of geriatric nursing practitioners, guide the implementation of geriatric nursing professional nurse capacity training actions, and strive to 2025, the proportion of geriatric nursing professional nurses participating in the training is not less than 90%.

These are some of the work that we have promoted at the national level, and we can ask Hunan Province to introduce some specific measures.

Zhu Yimin, Deputy Director of the Hunan Provincial Health Commission: Continuing with the topic of Director Xing, I will introduce the development situation in Hunan. There are 14.604 million elderly people in Hunan Province, accounting for 22.23% of the total population of the province. In recent years, our province has actively explored and innovated new models of geriatric nursing, jointly issued relevant documents to accelerate the development of geriatric nursing services, formulated guidelines for the construction and capacity improvement of geriatric medical departments, strengthened the comprehensive assessment of the elderly, the diagnosis and treatment of multiple diseases, the safety of elderly patients, rehabilitation and palliative care management, explored the excellent service of hospitals, and supported the development of geriatric medical care. Our province organizes medical institutions at all levels in the province to carry out excellent hospital services, and makes patients safer through excellent management; Make diagnosis and treatment more effective through medical excellence; Improving patient comfort through care excellence; Through excellent humanities, doctors and patients will be more loyal, improve the patient's medical experience, and enhance the patient's sense of security and gain. At the same time, the number of geriatric medical care institutions will be increased through transformation and social forces. At present, there are 108 rehabilitation hospitals, nursing homes and nursing centers in the province, providing more than 40,000 beds for geriatric medical care services, training more than 27,000 geriatric nursing professional nurses and more than 10,000 geriatric medical nurses.

In the next step, Hunan Province will take multiple measures to continue to promote the high-quality development of geriatric medical care. The first is to strengthen the construction of the elderly care team. Construct a three-level geriatric nursing (nursing) chain of "nurses-caregivers-caregivers" to maximize the effectiveness of human resources in geriatric nursing. The second is to optimize multidisciplinary collaboration. Establish multidisciplinary nursing collaboration teams such as geriatrics, rehabilitation, nutrition, and traditional Chinese medicine to provide patients with personalized "one-stop" geriatric care services. The third is the empowerment of real data. Through big data, intelligent matching and real-time contact between caregivers, homebound elderly and family members can be realized. Integrate resources with "Internet + nursing services", extended nursing services, home nursing services, and medical alliances to provide integrated nursing services such as "online consultation, door-to-door service, and popular science education" for the elderly. Thank you.

Peng Bin, Vice President of Peking Union Medical College Hospital: The grassroots need to continue to improve the capacity of elderly care services. In addition to completing a large number of daily medical care work in the hospital, Union Medical College Hospital also actively promotes assistance to primary medical institutions. We do this in a few ways. It mainly accepts medical staff from primary medical institutions to come to the hospital for further study, and also regularly visits primary hospitals and communities for on-site guidance, ward rounds and continuous online support. Now there is a medical alliance, and we also have good communication and cooperation with the medical alliance units to improve our nursing service capabilities. For example, the geriatric nursing team of Union Medical College regularly visits community hospitals and health centers to popularize science for the elderly, focusing on the prevention and intervention of common diseases of the elderly, such as cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, common symptom management and prevention of falls in the elderly, and how to avoid malnutrition in the elderly, so as to improve the healthy lifestyle and health literacy of the elderly. The geriatric nursing team also regularly trains our grassroots nurses in the community, conducts lectures, nursing rounds, and conducts workshops, etc., aiming at some problems that arise in nursing work, especially at the grassroots level, such as some elderly people usually have some nasogastric tubes for treatment, etc., and the gastric tubes are sometimes easy to fall off. Reducing referrals to other medical institutions such as major hospitals increases the burden of other medical care and increases the burden on patients. At the same time, it has also improved the service capacity of community nursing. Thank you.