"I don't know how to use a self-service number pick-up machine. The old man is careful to peek at the person in front of him, and he is afraid that he will be disliked if he gets too close." "The old man with weakened eyesight can't read the text on the machine, and he can't find it even when his nose touches the screen. Where is the pay button."
Su Mingwei, a pension project entrepreneur, wrote on her personal social media account.
At this time, the old man needs a doctor to accompany him.
Accompanying it, batches of young entrepreneurs have flocked to the home-based elderly care track, and emerging professions such as "accompanying clinicians" and "bath assistants" have appeared in the public eye.
Entries such as #95 post-young guy as an escort doctor earning over 10,000 a month#, #90 post-90 post-dachang girl resigning and starting her own business to help the elderly with bath# also appeared on the hot search.
Combining what she has seen and heard in the hospital and relevant market research, after graduating from the National People's Congress, Su Mingwei started her own business in the field of elderly care with a clinician as a starting point - a clinician has a low entry threshold, low investment, easy to use, and can be expanded after doing it. Other business.
Data show that by the end of 2021, there were 200.56 million elderly people aged 65 and over in the country, accounting for 14.2% of the total population.
According to international standards, the proportion of the population over 65 years old is more than 7%, which is an "aging society", and that more than 14% is an "aging society".
The aging population has also spawned a silver-haired economy, of which the home-based care industry has huge market potential.
There is no need for a venue or 24-hour escort, and only a specific service item needs to be provided according to the needs of the elderly. Home-based care has become a typical asset-light entrepreneurial project.
So, what is the current status of the development of entrepreneurs in the home care industry under the heat?
Is it the norm in the industry that the monthly income exceeds 10,000 yuan?
Is home care a good business for entrepreneurs?
In this regard, Shell Finance reporters interviewed a number of home-based pension entrepreneurs, trying to uncover the answers to the above questions.
Home care service is not only a service but also a kind of companionship
The operation of scanning the code in the hospital with the smartphone that has been eliminated by the children is the first stumbling block faced by the elderly.
Ordinary people often need to try over and over again for self-service registration, order collection, and payment operations that can be completed easily and quickly, and even trouble strangers again and again.
In the hospital, Su Mingwei often sees the overwhelmed old man standing in front of the hospital's self-service terminal.
They clutched crumpled cases, left in place by the torrent of the information age.
On October 26, 2022, the Ministry of Civil Affairs held a regular press conference for the fourth quarter. Li Banghua, deputy director of the Department of Elderly Care Services of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, introduced that according to the survey, the proportion of empty-nesters in my country's elderly population has exceeded half. In rural areas, the proportion of empty-nest elderly even exceeds 70%.
In the face of the digital divide, elderly people living alone often face many obstacles when seeking medical care.
Another 4-hour escort order, this is the third time that escort Ruier has received an order from Grandpa Xie.
Grandpa Xie's right arm was swollen, two full circles thicker than his left arm.
For various reasons, there is no family to accompany him to see a doctor. For Grandpa Xie, who is old and does not know how to use smart devices, even taking the subway is a big problem.
During the first visit, in order to observe the lesions more clearly, the doctor prescribed 5 different examinations for Grandpa Xie for the same part - X-ray, CT, MRI, PET-CT and bone scan.
However, examination items of similar nature are distributed in 5 unconnected places in the hospital - the 5 examinations are in different buildings, floors, areas, and departments of the hospital, and even the examination appointment methods are different.
Ruier shuttled around the hospital, helping Grandpa Xie to complete all the appointments as much as possible, and then introduced the examination location and appointment time to Grandpa Xie over and over again.
In addition to helping the elderly familiarize themselves with the hospital environment, the escort will also play the role of a "temporary family member".
During the escort, looking at one checklist after another, Grandpa Xie's attitude towards medical treatment gradually changed.
The cheerful and smiling old man became silent and melancholy, and from time to time he muttered, "Am I going to die?" "This disease is dying."
After witnessing the change in Grandpa Xie's mood, Rui Er will explain the specific purpose of each examination to the elderly at Lajiachang, correcting the elderly's misunderstanding that "doing PET-CT is equal to getting cancer".
A few days later, Grandpa Xie, who was doing bone marrow biopsy for the first time, found Ruier to accompany him again.
After the puncture, Ruier continued to press for 20 minutes in order to avoid bleeding from the wound.
From then on, Grandpa Xie called Rui Er his "daughter, more kissable than a pro-daughter" when asked by anyone in the hospital.
What Ruier didn't expect was that Grandpa Xie ordered the escort service after the examination.
This time, Rui Er didn't need to run up and down to accompany her to the clinic. Grandpa Xie only wanted her to "chat with herself".
"There are many unmet needs in the elderly care service market, and everyone's concept of escorting clinics is still stuck in the ideology of housekeeping services. The stereotype of escorting clinics is that they are regarded as nurses and nanny, but in fact escorts Consultation is more about meeting the emotional needs of the elderly. Taking the elderly to see a doctor is only the most basic thing. It is very important that you go to chat with the elderly and provide him with emotional comfort and care.” Su Mingwei, who is also an accompanying clinician think so.
In addition to escorts, there are also occupations such as bath assistants and 24-hour home care workers in the home care market.
According to data from the Beijing Civil Affairs Bureau, as of August 2021, the city's assessed elderly with severe disabilities were about 140,000, nearly doubling from last year.
Looking at the whole country, relevant data show that in 2020, there will be more than 42 million disabled elderly people over 60 years old in my country.
For the elderly who are bedridden due to illness, taking a bath has become a luxury.
Bathing the elderly is not an easy task.
Communication with the elderly and children from the front door.
From the preparations before bathing, to the cleaning and recycling of equipment and materials after bathing, Li Minhua, the entrepreneur of the pension project, has upgraded four versions of the standard process of bathing assistance, including more than 50 details of bathing assistance. For example, bathing the elderly should start from Wash your feet - the blood circulation of the elderly is not good, and washing your hair at the beginning will easily stimulate the cerebral blood vessels.
Compared with other home-based elderly care services, Li Minhua believes that deep bathing assistance is a just-needed service, because helping the debilitated elderly to take a bath requires professional equipment and at least 2-3 people to assist. It is difficult to do the job, and the children of the elderly lack professional nursing knowledge, which is easy to injure the elderly. In addition, sending the disabled elderly to the bathroom outside has a greater risk of movement.
There are few customers, it is difficult to promote, and it is difficult to recruit people with low wages... The home-based elderly care business is hindered and long
The inconvenience of bathing after her mother's fracture made Li Minhua realize the importance of bathing services.
In 2021, the bathing assistance industry has not yet emerged in China. She saw a blank spot in the market. In the end, she chose to join the business of bathing assistance services for the elderly.
In fact, when she heard that Li Minhua planned to resign to help the old man take a bath, her former colleagues were puzzled.
After graduating from the Japanese major, Li Minhua, who is proficient in both Japanese and Korean foreign languages, entered the auto parts company and engaged in the sales of major Japanese and Korean customers. Due to her outstanding performance, she became the fastest employee of the group company to be promoted to the sales director in a few years. one.
Before leaving, Li Minhua was already the head of the Beijing branch and had many years of management experience.
Li Minhua told the Shell Finance reporter that she felt that she had encountered a bottleneck in her original workplace, and it was difficult to have more room for breakthroughs. She was looking for entrepreneurial projects and learned about the Japanese bathing industry through the introduction of Japanese friends.
In Japan, bathing assistance is already a relatively popular service for the elderly. When the elderly reach a certain age, bathing assistance staff will regularly come to provide services, and its development model is quite mature.
After seeing the huge potential demand in the bathing aid industry, Li Minhua decided to seize the opportunity to fill the domestic gap.
In March last year, she purchased a series of bath aid equipment from Japan, and at the same time introduced and learned the relevant bath aid service procedures, and started her own entrepreneurial journey.
However, the pain in the education market was something she hadn't thought of before.
When she started last year, she released service information on 58.com, but the number of customer orders was not satisfactory. This year, they turned to Meituan.
When it was launched in major communities in Beijing, community workers did not dare to blindly cooperate with them because they were private institutions.
Advertising information is published on Xiaohongshu and Douyin, and the content is defined as sensitive information by the platform, limiting the traffic.
One node where the order volume suddenly increased was media coverage.
The increase in social attention has brought exposure to Li Minhua's team.
She told the Shell Finance reporter that the team's current order frequency is stable at 100-200 orders per month.
However, according to her estimation, her team's monthly order limit is around 600, and it has not even reached 1/3 of the upper limit.
In terms of revenue, Li Minhua's bathing assistance team is still mainly charged on a single time. Each bathing assistance requires 2-3 bathing assistants to drive to the door at the same time. An additional 50-100 yuan remote fee will be charged.
Li Minhua told the Shell Finance reporter that since he started his business for more than a year, the revenue can only barely support the wages of team members, and he is still in a state of loss.
Su Mingwei, who is in the escort business, is in a similar situation to Li Minhua.
Although her team has a stable source of customers, the number of orders is not saturated. "The problem of the market has always plagued us, and it is difficult to open up the market. Many people think that we are a fraud company and are unwilling to cooperate with us."
A few days ago happened to be the first anniversary of the establishment of Su Mingwei's escort company. She told the Shell Finance reporter that she had not received a single penny in salary within a year, and even had to pay for herself to maintain operations.
Su Mingwei's company's revenue can only cover the labor costs of the team except her. Because of funding problems, she has experienced the departure of two partners. When the team was at its most difficult, she didn't even have anyone to discuss the company's operation plan.
After publishing the entrepreneurial experience notes on Xiaohongshu, for a period of time, hundreds of messages were added to the notes every day. Su Mingwei also received many private messages from job seekers, including young people who graduated from Tsinghua University, Renmin University, Xiamen University and other colleges and universities. .
Su Mingwei was very moved to see so many outstanding young people wanting to join the pension business, but the monthly income of more than 10,000 yuan only exists in the hot search. Even in first-tier cities, it is difficult for ordinary escort clinics to offer tens of thousands of yuan in wages. .
In the period after the note was released, Su Mingwei interviewed 100 young people, but the number of successful recruits was 0.
To be a professional escort doctor requires a lot of personal comprehensive quality. The escort doctor must not only have knowledge of medicine, but also understand the psychology of the elderly, and also need to have enough love and affinity, and also need to have good communication skills and reliability. 's character.
Young people who can meet these requirements are often discouraged by wages.
Su Mingwei told the Shell Finance reporter that if the personal escort doctor's business is good, the monthly income may exceed 10,000, but at present, it is completely impossible within the team.
In addition to continuing to try to expand customer sources, Su Mingwei's team is currently considering expanding into the e-commerce and after-diagnosis markets.
Home care services, real demand or pseudo demand?
Since the first half of this year, Mr. Hu's team has begun to expand home-based elderly care services.
He is also the only profitable entrepreneur among several interviewees of Shell Finance reporters.
Mr. Hu's team has been operating in the field of hospital escort for about 5 years. In its heyday, it had cooperative resources from ten hospitals and managed thousands of nurses.
Since last year, seeing that many entrepreneurs have joined the home care industry, he has also begun to expand related businesses, providing 24-hour home care services for the elderly who still need to be cared for after leaving the hospital.
However, Mr. Hu said frankly that his profitability is due to the cooperation with the hospital. After the contract expires, whether or not he can win the bid next time will have a great impact on the follow-up of the business.
Taking the monthly nursing fee of 15,000 yuan per elderly person as an example, the long-term care insurance only provides 3,600 yuan of nursing fee per month, and there are very few elderly people who can afford the remaining expenses.
Mr. Hu believes that although there will be a large number of elderly people in my country in the future, and the demand for home care will be huge, but these needs are generally low per unit price, and the audience for his home care business is limited.
In the middle of this year, Li Minhua went deep into the community and helped the community pension station to make a questionnaire.
She was impressed by the results of the questionnaire. When asked what kind of home care services the elderly need, 80% of the elderly or their family members selected no services.
This made Li Minhua also feel that the promotion of home-based elderly care services has a long way to go.
Mei Mei, who used to work in a pension station, told Shell Finance reporter that many pension stations are not operating well.
The subsidies provided by the government for the elderly in the community will be included in the service items in the form of deductions, but the elderly generally have little willingness to pay, preferring themselves or letting their children and nannies solve their living needs.
For example, the door-to-door cleaning market charges 60 yuan per hour. After subsidies, the community only needs 40 yuan per hour, but few elderly people will take the initiative to choose this service.
Meimei revealed to Shell Finance reporters that unless there are beds in the community post station and there are elderly people staying there, most elderly people will only actively choose free items such as haircuts.
It is also because of the sluggish market demand that the inn cannot operate some paid items, so some service items are equivalent to fake.
In Mr. Hu's view, many entrepreneurs now do not understand the real and pseudo-demands in the home-based elderly care market.
Compared with institutional care, home care has low cost and high flexibility. It is also the mainstream choice for the vast majority of elderly care in China. However, the general trend does not represent strong demand. Mr. Hu believes that neither bathing assistance nor accompanying doctor is currently living alone. The real high-frequency and rigid demand of the elderly, "The lack of customers can only mean that the product is not strong enough. The home care industry is still waiting for a blockbuster project to appear, or the industry has not yet developed into a real era of strong demand."
Both entrepreneurs who are working on pension projects told Shell Finance that their paying customers are basically children, and few elderly people actively contact them to purchase services.
Su Mingwei believes that the current elderly are mainly post-50s and post-60s. They advocate thrift and are not willing to pay for service items. However, the consumption habits of the next batch of post-80s generation are completely different, and they are more willing to pay for service items. The requirements for quality of life are also higher.
She believes that the home-based elderly care industry will be a new wave of development, with huge development prospects in the future.
Although the customer source is limited, customer loyalty and high repurchase rate also make Su Mingwei see the possibility of cultivating the consumption habits of the elderly in the future. Now, what they need to do is to maximize the customer source and let themselves live first.
At the same time, several entrepreneurs are actively contacting B-end customers.
Li Minhua told Shell Finance reporter that after media reports, after the team's social attention has increased, more and more C-end customers can directly find them, and some B-end customers come to seek cooperation, mainly for post stations, hospitals, and communities. and other institutions.
There are also more and more caring people who take the initiative to introduce channel resources.
At present, about 20% of their orders come from the introduction of pension stations.
Su Mingwei also said that her team continues to polish the service process and optimize the service system, hoping to establish cooperation with large B-end companies.
"Elderly care has never been a project that can make big money and fast money, but I still think it will be the biggest outlet in the future." Su Mingwei said.
Beijing News Shell Finance reporter Li Menghan