Rebalancing long term care in Hong Kong

Abstract

INTRODUCTION : Hong Kong is aging very fast. Approximately, 14% of its population were 65 year or older in 2011. By 2030, 1 in every 4 people in Hong Kong will be aged 65 and over. The dominating mode of long term care (LTC) in Hong Kong is residential care with community care as supplement. Our center was appointed by the HK Government to conduct a comprehensive review of the LTC system in HK in 2010. We will present findings from this study in this presentation. METHOD : We reviewed all LTC policy documents and administrative data. We conducted a survey with 4,000 people to assess their LTC needs and preference. We also conducted focus groups with stakeholders. RESULTS : The LTC system in HK is inbalance. The ratio of public spending between community care and residential care was $1.0 to $6.7 in 2010-11. In 2010-11, there were 24,746 publicly funded residential vs. 7,098 community care places. About 6.8% of all residents age 65 years or older were in nursing home. While there is still a long waiting list (more than 26,000 people) for government funded residential care, very few older people want to move to nursing home. We found that the government policies provide a strong incentive for family members to send their elderly family members to nursing home. We proposed a LTC voucher system for the HK Government to rebalance the LTC system. CONCLUSION : The HK Government accepted our recommendation and will implement a pilot LTC voucher system in 2013.