Wanjia Kanghu: Focusing on In-Hospital Patient Care Centers to Solve the Standardization Challenge of the Last Mile in Medical Services

At the turn of the year, two “authoritative announcements” drew significant attention to the elderly care industry.

On November 15, 2021, the National Health Commission issued the “Notice on Launching Pilot Programs for Elderly Medical and Nursing Care Services,” explicitly requiring the implementation of pilot programs for home-based medical and nursing care services for the elderly. Fifteen regions, including Beijing, Tianjin, Zhejiang, Shanghai, and Guangdong, were designated as pilot provinces.

In the same week, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the "Opinions on Strengthening Elderly Care Work in the New Era," reiterating the active development of "Internet + care services," home-based elderly care beds, and nursing-type elderly care beds.

The two documents share a common underlying theme:China has further advanced into an aging society, and the importance of elderly medical and nursing care services is becoming increasingly evident.The industry is brightening like the morning sun, with immense opportunities and potential evident across all fronts—from online platforms to offline health and wellness institutions.

ONE CARE is a healthcare service provider dedicated to home nursing and health management. By implementing systematic training in rehabilitative care, innovating nursing models, and integrating digital health with health technology, the company delivers inpatient, outpatient, home-based rehabilitation, and long-term care services to patients, particularly the elderly population.

ONE CARE Training Academy will also launch training programs for China’s 14 million healthcare and caregiving professionals, providing continuing education and vocational training.Currently, ONE CARE has launched operations in multiple provinces and cities, including Beijing, Henan, and Shaanxi, establishing a nationwide patient care center network.

According to United Nations standards, a region is considered an aging society when the population aged 60 and above accounts for 10% of the total population, or those aged 65 and above account for 7%. Currently, China’s aging process is advancing rapidly, with an annual increase of 10 million elderly individuals.According to the data from the Seventh National Population Census, China’s population aged 60 and above accounted for 18.7% of the total population, reaching 249 million, marking the country’s overall entry into a deeply aging society.

China is the country with the “fastest aging” and the “largest elderly population” in the world. Against the backdrop of an increasingly severe demographic situation,Caring for elderly patients with chronic diseases, disabled seniors, and the very old requires significant investments of time and energy. The massive aging population has also brought broad market prospects to the elder care sector, with the market size expected to exceed RMB 10 trillion in 2022.

However, at the same time, China has 4.1 million registered nurses, with only three nurses per 1,000 people, resulting in a significant imbalance between the number of individuals requiring care and the available caregiving workforce.The number of elderly individuals with disabilities or partial disabilities has exceeded 40 million. According to international standards, one caregiver is required for every three elderly persons, indicating that China’s demand for eldercare caregivers exceeds 10 million. However, the current supply of certified care professionals falls far short of this figure.

Zhu Pei, CEO of ONE CARE, told VCBeat that, in reality, the primary role family members can play during the caregiving process is companionship, as providing professional care poses significant challenges for them. Professional caregiving delivered by trained personnel enables more effective patient rehabilitation. “There is a need for professionals who can provide both companionship and nursing care throughout this process. Therefore, I believe this sector deserves our attention, as it can address the long-term care needs of China’s 260 million elderly population while also alleviating the pain points experienced by patients’ families.”

According to Zhu Pei, rehabilitation care services are akin to the “last-mile” logistics provided by companies like JD.com, Meituan, and Ele.me, requiring extensive human-to-human interaction. The last mile of medical services is also a form of “human-to-human service”; it is the final stretch closest to patients and the critical point at which patients ultimately experience the value of the service.

In 2021, ONE CARE was established, focusing on building a network of patient care centers within hospitals and effectively connecting them with out-of-hospital rehabilitation and nursing centers to form a closed-loop system for comprehensive patient care services and health management.It also provides services across six key dimensions: patient care, hospital medical support, worry-free family services, patient medical assistance, care follow-up services, and digital empowerment.

Among them, the in-hospital services oriented toward patients mainly consist of two business segments, focusing on departmental ward services, alleviating nurses' workload, and assisting patients in resolving practical issues encountered in daily care.For instance, based on the specific conditions of each ward, a relatively stable number of care specialists are assigned, a team leader system is implemented, and services are delivered through a combination of “one-to-one” and “one-to-many” models.

For patients with special needs (post-operative, critically ill, etc.), a one-on-one care model is primarily adopted. Within general wards, a one-to-many caregiving model is implemented. ONE CARE will determine the specific number of patients assigned to each caregiver based on departmental requirements, patient conditions, and room configurations.

In the in-hospital care setting, ONE CARE provides personalized companion care services, delivering targeted and precise support. Leveraging professional expertise, we offer patients psychological and emotional support to alleviate their emotional instability and facilitate physical recovery.

Beyond in-hospital care settings, ONE CARE also provides home-based care and rehabilitation services. In 2019, the National Health Commission issued the Pilot Work Plan for “Internet + Nursing Services,” proposing that registered nurses deliver home nursing services through an “online application, offline service” model for mobility-impaired populations, such as the elderly who are advanced in age or disabled, thereby assigning responsibility for home-based elderly care to healthcare institutions.ONE CARE can develop tailored service plans based on the needs of hospitals and patients, standardize staffing for each role, enhance care quality through rigorous management and ward environment planning, thereby alleviating the caregiving burden on healthcare institutions.

Regarding this plan, Zhu Pei stated, “We aim to integrate the in-hospital care center with the out-of-hospital rehabilitation center, delivering a one-stop service that covers the entire patient journey from admission and discharge to home-based care.”

When asked by VCBeat about the greatest impact of his 15 years in the internet industry, Zhu Pei responded, “Ultimate user experience and disruptive innovation—these two factors lead to the standardization of the industry by you, thereby creating the possibility for a platform.“Looking back at the digital transformation of these traditional industries, it is essentially a process of productizing services. In this process, you continuously establish standards to shape them into your desired model. Through this model, you can quantify the industry, thereby enabling large-scale operations and replication. Only through long-term data accumulation can intelligent transformation and enhancement be achieved.”

Meanwhile, the evolution of product and service offerings from extensive to refined models is an inevitable path for all industries.Zhu Pei believes that the entire care industry is currently still in its nascent stage, with a notable gap remaining between existing services and medical care solutions that truly meet customer needs.

Throughout this process, Zhu Pei repeatedly emphasized a concept, namely specialization, “"Specialization does not mean arbitrarily assigning caregivers. In our view, we need to conduct assessment analyses and make specialized recommendations for inpatients, such as determining whether a patient requires orthopedic care, nephrology care, oncology care, or ICU care, and then implementing professional care plans accordingly. We are moving toward deeper and more specialized development to drive the advancement of this industry."

A key component of specialization is professional caregiving personnel.Currently, ONE CARE is establishing a professional training base for caregivers to supply talent to the caregiving industry. It aims to train professional caregivers, elderly care assistants, registered nurses, rehabilitation nursing staff, and management personnel.We are currently establishing partnerships with several international health organizations to provide solutions based on internationally recognized best practices.

Zhu Pei stated, “In the future, we hope our training school will be able to supply talent across China, sending caregiving professionals to Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, as well as to Southeast Asia, Japan, South Korea, and other regions.”

"The Last Mile" is a crucial component of today's healthcare service model. Although many challenges remain in last-mile services, the health and care industry is becoming increasingly vibrant thanks to the power of technology.Zhu Pei stated with confidence, “In the foreseeable next decade, ‘human-to-human services,’ as the last mile of healthcare delivery, will inevitably become a hallmark of emerging jobs and professions, much like the last-mile logistics of Meituan and JD.com, thereby bringing greater room for imagination and possibilities to the industry’s development.”

Zhu Pei stated that, as a professional care service operator in China, ONE CARE has remained committed to deepening its presence in the care industry since its inception, building an integrated care service system spanning both in-hospital and out-of-hospital settings, and striving to realize the social service value of the “last mile.”