China's Model for the Longevity Era: How Taikang Reimagines Integrated Medical and Elderly Care

It seems that the era of centenarians is no longer so distant from us, though it is unclear when this shift began.

From a data perspective, the 2021 census data shows that the proportion of China's population aged 65 and above has exceeded 13.5%. This figure is projected to reach 14% around 2022.

Furthermore, as living standards improve, population aging is accompanied by increased longevity. In 2016, the life expectancy at birth in China was 76.3 years; some experts project that, if this trend continues, it will reach 81.9 years by 2040.

Yet “old age” and “illness” invariably go hand in hand. As population aging intensifies, in what condition can we step into the century-life era? And how should we arrange our later years?

In today’s elderly care service models, the integration of medical and elderly care combines healthcare, rehabilitation, health maintenance, and wellness into a unified system, enabling effective synergy between medical resources and elderly care resources. As a result, it has gradually become an indispensable component of the elderly care industry and a key strategic direction for many enterprises entering this sector.

Since entering the elderly care sector in 2007, Taikang has dedicated over a decade to research and deep cultivation, creating a Chinese-style integrated model of medical and elderly care that has been gradually implemented across the country. It is reported that Taikang currently operates 10 high-quality medical-elderly care communities, serving more than 5,800 seniors.

On January 15, representatives from government, business, academia, and research sectors convened in Guangzhou for the “Longevity Era Greater Bay Area Aging Health Industry Forum,” hosted by Taikang Health Investment, to engage in multidimensional, in-depth discussions on the opportunities and challenges presented by the current era of longevity.

Image source: Provided by the company

Meanwhile, Taikang Community · Yueyuan, the first high-quality medical and elderly care community established by Taikang in the Greater Bay Area, has celebrated its fifth anniversary. Over the past five years, Yueyuan has successively received honors such as “Guangdong Province Five-Star Elderly Care Institution” and “Yangcheng Gold Medal Elderly Care Institution,” and has continued to gain favor among seniors thanks to its innovative elderly care model and professional services.

Image source: Provided by the company

Nestled amidst picturesque landscapes and exuding a classical ambiance, this is the first impression of Taikang Community·Yue Garden.

Taikang Community · Yue Garden is located in the Changlingju International Ecological Residential Area of Huangpu District, Guangzhou. The community features elegant architectural styles and deeply integrates garden water features and the original ecological environment with living areas, establishing a tone of high-quality elderly care services from a visual perspective.

Of course, merely having high-end environmental configurations is clearly insufficient to strongly support Yueyuan’s status as a model for elderly care in the Greater Bay Area.

The shift in age has led to a significant transformation in the social roles of the elderly. Therefore, re-evaluating, repositioning, and unlocking the value of seniors—turning elder care into elder enjoyment—is key to Yueyuan’s creation of high-quality, high-value services.

In fact, since its opening in 2017, Taikang Community · Yue Garden has been committed to creating a “Value Recreation Center” for seniors. Centering on the needs of the elderly, it has introduced the distinctive concepts of “Cultural Elderly Care” and “Active Aging,” establishing a comprehensive service system that covers multiple fields.

To enrich the spiritual and cultural lives of seniors within the community, Taikang Community · Yue Garden has established a Cultural and Entertainment Center, a Sports and Health Center, and a large-scale wellness and recreation club. Additionally, the Letai Academy has been founded within the community, where seniors can not only select courses such as calligraphy and musical instruments based on their personal interests but also serve as instructors leveraging their own expertise, thereby fully realizing their personal value.

Birthday Event Hosted by Residents of Taikang Community·Yue Garden (Image Source: Provided by the Company)

It is understood that Taikang Community · Yueyuan Letai Academy currently offers up to 220 courses annually. During the course delivery, nearly 30 senior residents serve as instructors, and 26 interest-based clubs have been established, truly fulfilling its mission of crafting an enjoyable lifestyle for seniors.

At the forum, Qin Qun (a pseudonym), an 86-year-old resident of Taikang Community·Yue Garden, shared her experiences before and after moving into the community. She showcased the rich and scientifically structured cultural and recreational life available at Yue Garden, stating that it was precisely the community’s emphasis on spiritual well-being and its management of healthy living that enabled her to enjoy a vibrant retirement while managing chronic diseases.

It is evident that Taikang Community · Yue Garden differs significantly from traditional elderly care services in terms of service models and community configurations. It not only transforms the way elderly care is delivered but also reshapes the underlying philosophy, enabling seniors to age with elegance. This has always been the original mission behind the establishment of Taikang Community’s senior living communities.

In addition to valuable elderly care services, the unique integrated medical and elderly care model of Taikang Community·Yueyuan is also a key factor in gaining market recognition.

At Taikang Community, the standard operational model for all communities nationwide is “one community plus one hospital,” meaning that each community is equipped with an affiliated hospital. This setup establishes a three-tiered defense system for resident seniors, encompassing emergency care, chronic disease management, and rehabilitation. This service framework is also implemented at Taikang Community·Yue Garden.

Specifically, the Guangzhou Taikang Yueyuan Hospital, built as part of Taikang Community·Yueyuan, specializes in geriatrics, rehabilitation medicine, and health management. Its services are comprehensively tailored to the health needs of seniors, with robust capabilities for rapid response to emergencies.

At Taikang Community · Yue Garden, emergency pull-cord alarm devices are commonly installed in spaces such as living rooms, bedrooms, and bathrooms. Over the past five years, Yue Garden has successfully provided more than 1,300 effective emergency responses triggered by these alarms. Upon activation, security personnel, butlers, and medical staff arrive at the scene immediately to deliver on-site first aid and facilitate referrals to external hospitals, tailoring their interventions to residents’ physical conditions.

To better support this healthcare service system, Taikang Community Yueyuan incorporated surrounding medical resources as a key consideration in its initial planning stages. It is reported that Yueyuan has established green referral channels and two-way referral mechanisms with multiple medical institutions, including Lingnan Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University. This enables effective coordination with Guangzhou Taikang Yueyuan Hospital, truly covering the entire continuum of care—from health check-ups, prevention, and wellness to diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation.

As a mature senior living community that has been in operation for five years, Yueyuan has more extensively integrated smart technology with elderly care services. From its smart elderly care platform and smart security platform to the suite of smart elderly care products under Taikang Community, Yueyuan’s smart elderly care service system is becoming increasingly comprehensive, gradually establishing “smart medical and elderly care” as its distinctive professional specialty.

In addition, Guangzhou Taikang Yueyuan Hospital has established a terminal care hospice ward, marking the fourth hospice care project in Taikang’s terminal care layout, following those in Beijing Yanyuan, Wuhan Chuyuan, and Nanjing Xianlin. Compared with conventional end-of-life care services, Taikang’s terminal care encompasses a comprehensive service chain from end-of-life to post-mortem arrangements, adhering to the “Four Wholes” philosophy—whole-person, whole-family, whole-process, and whole-team care—to provide patients and their families with comprehensive, dignified, and humanized caregiving services.

As a senior living model with extensive accumulated experience, the Taikang Community·Yueyuan model has been rolled out across the Greater Bay Area. It is reported that following Taikang Community·Yueyuan, Taikang’s second high-quality senior living community in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Taikang Community·Pengyuan, has been established in Shenzhen, with its experience center successfully commencing trial operations last November.

In addition, Taikang has made new attempts in the integrated medical and elderly care industry. Building on its previous model of establishing secondary rehabilitation hospitals within self-built communities and collaborating with nearby tertiary hospitals, Taikang is now exploring a more advanced model of medical-elderly care integration that features a tighter combination of its own large-scale medical centers with retirement communities.

It is understood that the Shenzhen Qianhai Taikang International Hospital (under preparation), one of Taikang’s five major medical centers, has also laid its foundation and commenced construction. Positioned as a high-quality, tertiary general hospital meeting international standards, the facility will, upon completion, not only establish efficient synergy with Taikang Community·Yue Garden and Peng Garden but also integrate with the existing Taikang Bybo Dental service network and end-of-life care services to form a mature, multi-dimensional service network in the Greater Bay Area. This integrated model of medical care and elderly care will transcend the previous single scenario focused solely on elderly care services, truly establishing a new healthcare service system that covers the Greater Bay Area and links the five major medical centers.

Image source: Provided by the enterprise

In fact, to continuously enhance its healthcare service capabilities, Taikang has long been exploring and strategically positioning itself in the field of advanced integration of medical and elderly care services. Starting from Nanjing, it has successively planned and established medical centers in Wuhan, Chengdu, Shenzhen, and Ningbo, covering Central China, the Greater Southwest, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and the Yangtze River Delta region. Among these, Taikang Xianlin Gulou Hospital in Nanjing and Taikang Tongji (Wuhan) Hospital in Wuhan have officially commenced operations.

As the starting point of Taikang’s healthcare initiatives, Nanjing is set to officially unveil the region’s first flagship integrated medical and elderly care complex—Taikang Xianlin International Medical and Elderly Care Park—which embodies a five-in-one model integrating medical care, education, research, eldercare, and rehabilitation.

Just recently, Taikang successfully hosted the 2022 Longevity Era Medical and Elderly Care Forum in Nanjing, themed “Embracing the Longevity Era, Enjoying a Healthy Life in Jiangsu.” Concurrently, the Taikang Grand Health Experience Center, located within the Taikang Xianlin International Medical and Elderly Care Park, officially opened its doors, comprehensively showcasing Taikang’s integrated medical, elderly care, rehabilitation, and wellness service system as well as its ideal “five-in-one” lifestyle.

So, specifically, what imaginative possibilities does the construction of the Taikang Xianlin International Medical and Elderly Care Park and its higher-level integrated medical and elderly care service model offer us?

Liu Tingjun, President and Chief Operating Officer of Taikang Insurance Group, believes that due to aging and declining physical functions, it is common for the elderly to live with illnesses or multiple coexisting conditions. Integrated diagnosis, treatment, and care services can better meet their needs for elderly care. However, at present, fragmentation remains evident in most payment and service systems, lacking efficient and close coordination.

Taikang Xianlin International Medical and Elderly Care Park addresses these pain points by leveraging the professional capabilities of a tertiary general hospital in emergency and critical care, along with the distinctive advantages of its geriatric specialty cluster. It integrates the entire service continuum—spanning health management, expedited medical access, acute-phase treatment, rehabilitation, nursing, and elderly care—to establish a “seamless” integrated healthcare system, thereby achieving a higher level of medical-elderly care integration.

Furthermore, the Taikang Xianlin International Medical and Elderly Care Park represents a physical consolidation of Taikang’s full-lifecycle products and services across its three major closed loops: longevity, health, and wealth. The development of this integrated medical and elderly care complex also underscores Taikang’s deepened commitment to advancing its model of integrating insurance with medical and elderly care services.

Overall, the emergence of this higher-level model of integrated medical and elderly care, built upon the “One Community + One Hospital” framework, demonstrates that Taikang has been consistently providing innovative solutions for seniors in the era of longevity.

As for the future, as Chen Dongsheng, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Taikang Insurance Group, stated, “Stay focused on doing the right thing, and time will provide the best answer.” We also hope that Taikang’s senior living solutions will reach more elderly individuals in the future, turning more ideal visions into reality.