In-home medical services listed
Shanghai’s health authorities released a list of 42 in-home nursing services on Monday.
They include treating wounds, giving injections, monitoring blood glucose levels, taking blood samples, thermal therapy, enemas, guasha, or skin-scraping, and baby care, according to the Shanghai Health Commission.
A notification released in February created a trial program allowing people to make appointments via app or Internet for in-home nursing services in Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin and the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong, long a gray area in the senior healthcare system.
The trial will be conducted at some medical treatment institutions in Changning, Putuo and Jing'an districts and the Pudong New Area to establish a management system and standards that suit the city, according to the commission.
The program’s in-home services cover specific care, chronic disease management, TCM nursing, rehabilitation care, maternal-child nursing and palliative care. The primary targets are elderly people with disabilities, those convalescing from hospital treatment or surgery and new mothers.
Nurses providing the services will have a minimum five years of clinical nursing experience and certain technical certifications.
Institutions should establish a management system to ensure quality and safety, the commission said, along with ensuring privacy and a risk prevention system.
They should make comprehensive assessment of the disease and health demand of applicants before providing such services, and agreements should be signed between institutions and patients to make sure patients are fully aware of what services are offered, their procedures and responsibilities to avoid risks.
Records should be kept for search and tracking, and institutions are encouraged to develop Internet information technology platforms or cooperate with third-party information technology platforms on the identification of service subjects, disease record collection, positioning of service providers, personal privacy protection and workload analysis.