老人照護服務營運模式初步探索

Abstract

隨著壽命增長與少子化現象，造成家庭結構改變、老人獨居或是老人白天乏人照料成為普徧現象社會現象，如何運用最少人力進行老人居家照護服務，成為21世紀新興熱門行業。但是由於老年居家照護產業必需整合高科技監視預警技術、居家服務、醫療與保險理賠等不同特性產業技術，因此系統建置先期投資成本高，造成居家照護服務企業投資回收慢，因此如何建立可實施的營運模式，分析內外環境與競爭優勢，收取合理服務費用，創造附加價值，成為發展老年照護產業所必需解決的困境。因此本研究旨在初探老年照護產業的服務模式，進而建立可執行的營運策略，提供企業投入相關系統營運時的參考。 本研究首先進行老年人口比率與老人照護巿場規模估算，接著研究老年人對於照護項目的需求。此後描述老年照護產業服務流程、系統網絡與需用硬体分析，評估可收費項目，在會員制架構的假設前提下，進行情境與靈敏性分析，探討企業損益平衡發生時間點，並計算投資5年後公司現金價值。本研究發現老年照護產業投資回收慢，因此投入廠商必需積極採取上下游產業聯盟方式降低營運成本，採用設備租用方式減少設備投資，吸收團体會員來加速達到經濟規模與損益平衡。 關於本研究的限制，主要在於老人照護服務產業發展仍需持續導入最新醫電通訊技術，因此未詳述最新數位通訊技術及疾病診斷技術在老人照護服務產業的影響及可能利基。期待後續研究者，可以針對高科技在照護服務產業的應用進行深層探討，促進老人居家照護產業全面發展。

As the age increases and fewer children are born, the result is that the changes in the structure of families, elder people living alone or lacking of care in daytime have become common social phenomena. Therefore, how to provide home care services for elder people with minimal manpower is now one of the most promising businesses in 21st century. However, since the elder home care services has to be integrated with high-tech monitoring and alerting technologies, home care services, medical services and insurance policies, the initial costs for establishing such a system is relatively high and the return on investment is low for the elder home care services. Therefore, issues like how to develop a practical operation pattern, analyzing internal and external environment and advantage over competition, collecting reasonable service fees and creating more added values are the difficulties that the elder home care services need to resolve. Thus, this research’s purpose is to give a preliminary discussion on the service patterns for the elder home care services to establish a feasible operation pattern for the reference when an enterprise starts running such operation. At first, this research carries out the estimates on the percentage of elderly population and the scale of elder care market, and then studies the needs for cares for the elder. Finally, the service procedure of elder home care, system networks and analysis on requirement of hardware are described and the chargeable items are evaluated. Based on the assumption of membership framework, scenario and sensitivity analysis is performed to discuss more about the point when balance of benefit and loss occurs, and the company’s cash value of 5 years later is calculated. This research has found that due to the slow return on investment of elder care services, business operators have to team up with up- and down-stream businesses as alliance to lower the cost of operations, to lease equipments to reduce the investment on purchasing equipments and to attract more members to accelerate the process of reaching financially profitable scale and the balance between benefits and losses. As the limitation of this research is primarily that the elder care services still require the introduction of latest medical-related electronic communication technology, therefore, the effects and potential benefits of the latest digital communication technology and disease diagnosis technology to the elder care services are not described in details. Hopefully, the future researchers will continue the research on the application of advanced technologies in care services in a deeper level in order to bring the elder home care services to a full development.