A PILOT insurance program for senior citizens needing long-term nursing care will expand from three districts of Shanghai to the entire city from Jan. 1.
Shanghai, one of the 15 pilot cities in China to implement long-term care insurance, carried out the program on a pilot basis in the three districts of Xuhui, Putuo and Jinshan in 2017.
About 25,000 elderly people applied for care services and 14,000 of them became beneficiaries.
From 2018, the program will target all Shanghai citizens aged 60 or older who need long-term care no matter where they stay — at home, nursing homes or hospitals — as long as they are covered by public medical insurance.
The elderly can receive 42 kinds of care services including personal hygiene services and clinical care at home, hospitals or nursing institutions. Fees will be largely covered by an insurance premium paid by individuals and the government.
There are more than 4.3 million citizens aged over 60 in Shanghai, or 30 percent of the population with permanent residence permits, while 7 percent of the senior citizens have partly or completely lost the ability to care for themselves and need long-term nursing services.
It is estimated there are 40,000 caregivers in the city who can visit private homes or take care of the elderly in institutions, according to Xu Hong, director of the medical insurance supervision division of the Shanghai Human Resources and Social Security Bureau.
Almost 600 nursing homes in the city have been approved to take part in the program and more are expected to join later, said Zhou Ji, director of the Shanghai Medical Insurance Administration Center.
Some 27 organizations have been set up with more than 10,000 evaluators to assess applicants’ health and their eligibility for care under the program.(SD-Agencies)