Lack of nurses
According to Zhao, the head nurse at the Beijing Geriatric Hospital, it is impossible to accommodate all the elderly patients facing serious diseases in hospitals.
Many hospitals are already overcrowded with regular patients, and most nursing homes will not accept patients because they lack professional staff and necessary equipment.
"For the Chinese, home is the best place for seniors at the end of their lives, if they don't want to receive unnecessary intrusive treatment, which might extend their life for a few hours," she said.
"Actually, most patients staying in these wards prefer the company of their family members and get care at home," she said.
"But most people lack a basic knowledge of senior care, and when elderly patients are sent to the hospital it is usually too late."
Li, for example, was in a fragile condition when she arrived and with skin ulcers. Nurses applied medicine to the damaged skin, cleaned her every day and turned her body every few hours, helping her to recover.
"The skin ulcer developed when she was at home due to lack of professional care," Zhao said. "We urgently need to train more professional nurses for hospice care, so they can take care of the elders at home instead of at hospitals."
Wang, Li's nurse, said Li's husband and son come to the hospital to see her once or twice a week.
"She cannot speak or move, even display any facial expressions," Wang said.
"But she always stares into her son's eyes when he visits her."
Ma, from the health commission, said the city plans to take more measures to encourage less-crowded grassroots hospitals, especially those in residential communities, to provide hospice care.
"The key lies in medical reform to improve the quality of service in grassroots hospitals and clinics so they can become more attractive to patients," he said.
Expensive hospice care
According to Zhao, high costs have prevented many patients from seeking hospital hospice care.
In the hospital's hospice care department, patients pay 300,000 yuan ($47,000) or more a year for care, including medical bills and nursing costs, although some have part or all of their bills reimbursed through insurance, she said. "Most of the patients here are from well-off families," she said.
Yang, the publicity official, said a lack of insurance is a major reason nursing homes have been discouraged from providing hospice services. Without insurance, such care is unaffordable for most families, but it is not available from the government.
