How Is China Coping With Its Burgeoning Need for Elderly Health Care?

Rising longevity and a declining birth rate mean China’s overall population is aging. In a recent interview, Jessica Tan, co-CEO at Ping An Group, said, “China has one of the largest and fastest-growing aging populations in the world.”³ By 2040, the World Health Organization predicts China’s over-60s to make up more than 28% of the total population, or 400 million people. That’s more than the total population of the U.S.⁴

China’s elderly care is often described by the figure 9073: 90% home-based elderly care, 7% community care and 3% nursing home care⁵. Traditionally, caring for the elderly was a family concern. But family units are rapidly shrinking. In China today, on average, there are five family members to look after one elderly person. This ratio is predicted to drop to 1.5 in 30 years. The question for society and policy makers is: Who is going to provide care for this burgeoning generation of elderly? Who will pay? Who will integrate or bring all the necessary services together to make elderly care viable?

"Elderly care in China has changed from a family matter to a national affair," says Li Dou, general manager of the home-based elderly care division of Ping An Life in Shenzhen. He adds that the latest government five-year plan proposes building an elderly care service system that coordinates home and community institutions and combines medical care and health care, enabling 24/7 customer services.

In a challenge to the private sector, Li says, the State Council determined commercial insurance institutions should be guided to accelerate the research and development of products suitable for diversified nursing needs such as home care, community care and institutional care.

Singaporean, Phua Tien Beng, who is based in Beijing, is at the provider end of the ecosystem. As group co-general manager, he heads up the hospital and clinic ecosystem as well as medical services. “With Peking University Healthcare Group and the support of Ping An's medical technology platform,” he says, “Ping An has built an ‘online-to-store home’ health care and elderly care service network, realizing the closed loop of insurance + medical services.” Fang Weihao, from Shanghai, heads up the health care ecosystem flagship integrator Ping An Health, also known as Ping An Good Doctor. The chairman and CEO says: “Through the membership system of family doctors, we establish connections between payment parties—including life insurance, pension insurance, health insurance, banks and other comprehensive financial channels serving B-end, F-end and C-end users —and suppliers—cooperative hospitals, pharmacies, health care institutions, testing centers and medical examination organizations, among other health care resources.

Ping An Health integrates three major business models: managed medical care + family doctor membership + O2O medical and health services, creating an industry leader.

In a nutshell, Ping An actively integrates its abundant health care service resources with nearly 4,000 in-house doctors and over 45,000 contracted external doctors as well as six proprietary 3A/tier-3 hospitals. In addition, by the end of 2022, Ping An had partnered with over 10,000 hospitals (including all top 100 hospitals and 3A hospitals in China), over 100,000 health care management institutions and approximately 224,000 pharmacies.