Study Of The Privately Funded Elderly Care Facilities’Obstacles And Countermeasures

Government funded elderly care systems are submitted to increasing onerous tasks of dealing with the change in our social dynamics that aging population has exacerbated the spread and the severity of the empty nest syndrome. Since publicly funded elderly care systems were not capable of fulfilling the multi-layered and divers elderly care services market alonely, privately funded elderly care facilities emerged and had gradually maneuvered into the dominant position thus became the driving force behind the elderly care market development. But as emerging forces, their road to success is not always smooth. Privately owned elderly care facilities face many obstacles such as low occupancy, capital shortage, sub par services, their situations have attracted attention from our society and academia.This research paper will elaborate upon the concepts of privately owned elderly care facilities, and theoretical studies at home and abroad related to this topic, followed by a thorough analysis of elderly care facility success in developed countries such as United State, Germany and Japan to conclude the four trends in the future of our privately owned elderly care facilities:investment diversification, market segmentation, professional services, conglomerate management.Secondly, HangZhou’s privately owned elderly care facilities will be the center of focus in this paper. I conducted a thorough analysis on the current development situation and problems based on various different channels such as on site research and investigation, surveys and group interviews. HangZhou’s privately owned elderly care facilities are well managed and showing positive momentum of growth. Even though they are in the list of the best facilities among facilities in medium to large sized cities, they still faced with challenges such as legal dilemmas of privately owned non-business units, onerous regulations, pressure and competition from publicly funded facilities, inadequate management and sub par services.Lastly, aiming to solve existing problems of HangZhou’s privately owned elderly care facilities, I have collected and organized case studies from home and abroad. Through my analysis, I propose that privately owned elderly care facility developments should be in accordance with government planning, seeking a government-led, policies backed, socially participated and market driven strategy, multilaterally supported environment to jointly propel the growth and development of privately owned elderly care facilities. To promote and propel the development of HangZhou’s privately owned elderly care systems, I provided suggestions that focused on five areas of improvements:subsidized and supported for the facilities, integration of elderly care resources, supply chain promotion, standardization of elderly care service, exploring new models for elderly care.