Walking into many tertiary hospitals in Beijing, smart medical facilities can be seen everywhere in the outpatient halls. In front of the self-service machine, you can often see old people squinting their eyes and approaching the screen, hesitantly stretching out their fingers, for fear of making mistakes in operation. After several attempts to no avail, they have no choice but to ask passers-by or doctors for help. Overcoming the obstacles of smart devices, complex medical treatment routes, and scattered examination departments also make it difficult for the elderly to adapt to medical treatment alone.
Against this background, the emerging career form of accompanying clinician has quietly become popular, which to a certain extent alleviates the medical problems faced by the elderly such as "no one to accompany them, no way to use, no ability to run, no understanding, and no way to find a doctor". The so-called medical attendant is a practitioner who provides patients with full-process medical accompanying services. Their main tasks include assisting in registration, accompanying consultations, making payment on behalf of patients, collecting medicines, receiving examination reports, and transporting patients to and from medical appointments, etc. How is your real experience with the medical escort service? What is the current development trend of this fast-growing new industry? Reporters have recently conducted on-site visits to a number of hospitals.
The hospital covers a large area and the buildings are far apart, making it easy to get lost while walking. "In the blood drawing area of Xuanwu Hospital, Mr. Wang from Shanxi had just finished collecting blood. He was pressing the hemostatic swab while looking around. His children helped him complete the online appointment in advance, but he was still worried about going to Beijing alone to seek medical treatment. "Although he recognizes the words, he is too old to keep up with the energy. He is afraid of making mistakes in the process, and his body cannot handle the traveling back and forth. "
The larger the hospital, the more refined the medical treatment process and the higher the degree of digitization. Online appointment check-in, examination departments scattered in different buildings, independent payment, report printing equipment... the whole process is easy for young people to make mistakes if they are slightly negligent. For the elderly who are slow in movement and unfamiliar with intelligent systems, they are often exhausted and physically and mentally exhausted after the whole process. Ms. Zhang, who goes to see a doctor alone, said frankly that the multiple medical problems faced by the elderly have made professional, cost-effective accompanying medical services a real demand, and can also effectively reduce the pressure on their children to accompany them to medical treatment.
In recent years, with the expansion of the number of elderly people living alone and empty nesters, and the number of people seeking medical treatment in different places across provinces and cities has continued to grow, the accompanying medical market is heating up rapidly. Tianyancha data shows that there are currently more than 2,000 related companies nationwide whose business scope includes accompanying services. Mr. Wang, a Beijing citizen, said that he made an appointment for medical escort service on an Internet platform after being recommended by a friend. The accompanying nurse will arrange the consultation time one day in advance, confirm the location of the hospital, and carefully remind the patient of the documents and past medical records that need to be brought; follow up the entire process on the day of the consultation, complete matters such as taking the number, accompanying the patient for consultation, payment, and collecting medicines, and provide route guidance. After several services, his mother also had a regular accompanying nurse, so she no longer had to worry about going to the hospital alone.
According to analysis by industry insiders, the rapid rise of the accompanying medical industry in recent years is mainly due to three practical factors. First, the aging of my country's population continues to deepen, the trend of family miniaturization is becoming increasingly obvious, the number of elderly people living alone and empty nests is increasing, and various difficulties for the elderly to seek medical treatment alone have emerged, creating a huge demand for medical assistance and accompanying care. Second, the digital transformation of hospitals continues to deepen. Intelligent medical treatment processes have improved hospital management efficiency, but also raised the threshold for medical treatment operations, posing obstacles to groups who are unfamiliar with online systems and hospital layouts. Third, some medical institutions have limitations in manpower allocation. Most of the in-hospital medical guides are fixed in positions such as registration and report collection. They can only provide basic guidance and cannot provide one-on-one full-process escort. It is difficult to cover all the needs of patients from admission to discharge, leaving market space for third-party medical escort services.
In recent years, Internet platforms such as Meituan, JD.com, Alibaba, and Didi have successively laid out companionship services, relying on their mature service ecosystems to launch standardized companionship portals and launch service packages, upgrading the original scattered and spontaneous companionship services to standardized, traceable, and easy-to-monitor online livelihood services. At the same time, vertical platforms such as Xiaoyi Medical Escort, Anhe Medical Escort, and Orange Medical Escort have deeply explored the segmented scenarios of medical accompaniment and complemented the comprehensive Internet platform to form the current online medical accompaniment service market pattern.
“We have set strict entry thresholds for accompanying nurses. Practitioners must have the title of nurse practitioner or above and have more than 3 years of clinical nursing experience. Before accepting an order, you must complete professional qualification verification and service ability assessment, and also participate in special training and assessment on service specifications, standard procedures, emergency response, etc. You can only take up the job after passing all the requirements. "The relevant person in charge of JD.com Nurse Home said that the platform is provided by practicing nurses who provide full-scale accompaniment, assist in planning the treatment plan before the diagnosis, accompany the queue, take the number, pay the fee, take medicine, participate in consultation and communication during the diagnosis, organize the medical orders after the diagnosis, and clearly explain the medication plan and home care points. The service focuses on the elderly, pregnant women, patients seeking medical treatment in other places and other groups. Since its launch, the city coverage has continued to expand, and the order size has steadily increased.
As the public's awareness of the escort profession deepens, the number of orders received by regular practitioners has steadily increased. Chen Yongming, a full-time medical escort and self-media blogger, and his wife have been in this industry for four years. He said that he can serve 60 to 70 customers per month by simply doing escort and agency business and receiving stable orders.
Ms. Li, an accompanying clinician who has been practicing for more than three years, said frankly that there are common misunderstandings in society. Many people think that accompanying patients is just a matter of providing support and running errands. In fact, high-quality accompanying services pay more attention to the coordination of the entire medical process. It requires planning the order of visits in advance, following up on the progress of various examinations, paying attention to department calls, sorting out diagnosis and treatment opinions, interpreting them in plain language to patients and their families, and taking into account a lot of detailed work. Chen Yongming has the same experience with this. He believes that the core value of the accompanying clinician is to build a buffer bridge for communication between doctors and patients. Practitioners need to be familiar with the diagnosis and treatment procedures of each department, various pre-examination requirements, and basic rules for medical insurance reimbursement. They must also have the ability to handle emergencies and be able to efficiently assist patients in solving medical problems.
Wang Ning, the founder of the accompanying clinician tribe community, pointed out that blurring professional identities is the biggest dilemma faced by current practitioners. Patients' needs vary significantly. They not only need accompanying doctors to serve as "living maps" of the hospital area, but also need multiple services such as emotional counseling, treatment plan planning, and long-term companionship for serious illnesses, which place higher requirements on the comprehensive capabilities of practitioners.
Despite strong market demand, shortcomings in industry standardization construction remain prominent. Industry experts said that at present, the development of the industry is mainly restricted by three major bottlenecks. First, there is a lack of unified industry standards, and there is a lack of unified basis for employee qualification identification, service process, and service quality evaluation; second, the supervision and training system is insufficient, the entry threshold for individual practitioners is low, and there is a lack of systematic pre-job training and regular supervision. Service levels are uneven, and safety risks are hidden; third, supply and demand information is asymmetric, and it is difficult for consumers to verify the qualifications of institutions and practitioners through public channels. The efficiency of matching supply and demand is low, and it is easy to encounter non-compliant services.
At the beginning of this year, eight departments including the Ministry of Civil Affairs jointly issued the "Several Measures on Cultivating Elderly Care Service Business Entities to Promote the Development of the Silver Economy", which clearly proposed to support the cultivation of professional accompanying medical assistance institutions and standardize the development of accompanying medical assistance services for the elderly. From a policy level, it pointed out the direction of standardized development for the accompanying medical assistance industry. Recently, the State Administration for Market Regulation approved the release of the national standard "Basic Requirements for Socialized Medical Accompanying Services", which will be implemented from November 1 this year. This is the first national standard in the field of accompanying medical services, providing a unified basis for the industry in terms of personnel qualifications, service boundaries, and process specifications.
At the same time, the implementation of the professional training system is accelerating. The Social Security Capacity Building Center of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security has launched a special training program for medical accompanying consultants. After students complete the course and pass the assessment, they can obtain an official training certificate; the National Open University Training Center simultaneously offers relevant training, using flexible learning and regular unified examination models to continue to provide professional talents to the industry.
The person in charge of JD Nurse Home said that in the future, the platform will continue to polish service standards, strengthen personnel capacity building, and promote professional nurse companionship to become a trustworthy and useful health service for the public. Talking about the long-term development of the industry, Wang Ning suggested accelerating the establishment of an information filing mechanism for medical attendants, and centrally collecting key information such as real-name authentication information, no criminal record certificates, health information, training experience, etc., to eliminate high-risk personnel from the source and maintain the bottom line of industry safety.
Industry experts said that in the long run, accompanying medical services will continue to be subdivided to accurately cover different groups such as the elderly, people living alone, people seeking medical treatment in other places, and patients with chronic diseases. On the one hand, we should continue to strengthen industry supervision and standardized governance, improve dispute resolution channels, and ensure the healthy development of the industry; on the other hand, we can promote the government and industry associations to build public information service platforms to uniformly verify the qualifications and service capabilities of practitioners, solve the pain point of the masses "cannot find and dare not choose reliable medical companions", achieve efficient supply and demand matching, and make the new medical companion business truly a reliable support for people to seek medical treatment and support medical care for the elderly.
China Economic Net reporter Guo Wenpei Our reporter Zhang Shuo
