Earlier this year I had the opportunity to tour Hong Kong Housing Society’s senior care facility, , and meet with several of their management people. Since that time, I have been doing additional research on the senior care infrastructure in Hong Kong, which is presented below .
In many ways, Hong Kong provides the opportunity to look at a geographic and cultural analog for the need and potential solution that will work in China. Of note are four take aways that the HKHS approach suggests will be equally, if not more so, problematic in China:
- The role of the Hong Kong government was not helpful – in fact in complicated operational decisions and ROI. For those eager to see the Chinese government get involved, keep in mind the sort of strings that typically come with governmental involvement and find ways to minimize them.
- Even in Hong Kong, a middle income solution is still needed. The high end market has a solution (both facility based and in-home). What remains the unsolved problem is a cost-effective middle class set of solutions.
- Longer lifespans mean longer ROI horizons. Sounds simple, but for the HKHS, planned versus actual turnover has extended the runway and reduced ROI expectations.
- I think this is the single biggest issue: even in a developed market like Hong Kong with all sorts of ancillary nursing and geriatric care that has been formalized in healthcare systems and medical training, the need for trained eldercare staff is acute. In the short term, this begs the question for operators in China of how they can address this, but it also suggests that for a savvy entrepreneur, finding a way to establish to training program in China might be the first scalable and profitable commercial opportunity that is monetized in China’s senior care market.
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