The integration of medical service and elderly care is a crucial step in Qingdao’s unremitting efforts to develop itself into a “China’s wellness-oriented bay area”.

At the end of May 2025, Qingdao started to pilot the provincial program on “coordination between five beds”.

The so-called program on “coordination between five beds” is primarily aimed at fostering the integration of “two beds about elderly care” (institutional elderly care and home-based elderly care and “three beds about medical services” (medical care at home, institutional medical care, hospice care) to break the barriers between medical services and elderly care and develop a whole-process elderly service system ranging from everyday care, medical treatment to hospice care.

With a focus on the “coordination between five beds”, Qingdao has leveraged the leading role of tertiary hospitals, and worked out two new ways amid the systemic reform on in-depth integration of medical services and elderly care. Public tertiary hospitals open dedicated institutions where senior citizens can have access to professional elderly and medical care services. Professional teams from tertiary hospitals work closely with elderly care institutions so that postoperative rehabilitation can be extended from hospitals to beds in such institutions. With these efforts, an increasingly interwoven network of medical and elderly care services across the city and all ages is faster taking shape, thereby paving a healthy foundation with the warmest human touch for Qingdao’s endeavor to grow into “China’s wellness-oriented bay area”.  (Huang Fei)