Facing aging society, China boosts geriatric care at major hospitals

China's top health authority said on Thursday that hospitals sitting on the upper two tiers of the nation's three-level hospital system are expected to set up geriatrics clinics as part of efforts to cope with a rapidly aging society.

The requirement is announced in a guideline for the establishment and management of geriatric departments at hospitals, which was released by the National Health Commission and represents an update from an older version released in 2019.

The new guideline said that a geriatric clinic should comprise outpatient consultation rooms, wards and comprehensive evaluation rooms.

The number of geriatric clinics beds should be no less than 20 at tertiary hospitals and at least 10 at secondary hospitals.

Such clinics should also be equipped with basic resuscitation equipment, such as tracheal intubation devices, simple respirators, electrocardiogram monitors and cardiac defibrillators.

Hospitals are also encouraged to add auxiliary bathing facilities, electric nursing beds, self-transfer devices, enteral nutrition infusion pumps and rehabilitation training equipment.

The guideline requires geriatric clinics to incorporate professionals in the fields of internal medicine, oncology, traditional Chinese medicine, rehabilitation, mental health, nursing, pharmacy and nutrition so as to offer multidisciplinary medical services and actively integrate TCM therapies.

Meanwhile, each geriatric hospital bed should be equipped with no fewer than 0.3 physicians and no fewer than 0.6 nurses on average.

Official data shows that the number of people age 60 and older in China was around 310 million last year, comprising 22 percent of the total population. The proportion of elderly is expected to exceed 30 percent of the nation's population by 2035.