Personal safety is the top priority

“Personal safety of nurses and medical safety of patients are the most pivotal factors of ‘Internet plus nursing’,” noted Jiao.

Zhang Di, a nurse from Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, shares her concerns. “I am expecting the ‘Internet plus nursing’ program and hoping to benefit from it, but my concerns are, for example, what if you are in danger while tending to a patient, and who will take responsibility of medical malpractice,” she said.

According to the program released by NHC, there are measures in place to ensure the safety of nurses. For example, when conducting the ‘Internet plus nursing’ program, local pilot medical institutions or the Internet technology platforms are required to equip nurses with positioning systems and service recorders, to trace the entire care process. One-button alarm devices, liability insurances, medical malpractice insurance, and personal accident insurance should all be provided.

“At present, most nurses in China are female, who are vulnerable and more likely to be attacked. Their personal safety could be easily threatened when a medical dispute occurs,” Deng Yong, an associate professor from the Law School of Beijing University of Chinese Medicine told Legal Daily.

“[For the pilot program], success or failure, it’s the personal safety of nurses that matters,” he said.

(Photo/Xinhua)

According to NHC, the program also requires nurses to have at least five years of clinical nursing experience. Local pilot medical institutions can develop their own Internet technology platforms or collaborate with a third party IT company.

NHC doesn’t negate the third-party apps in the market, but the core of home nursing services will rely on medical institutions. For the concerns of patient medical safety, the future trend of the home nursing app is to coordinate with the medical institutions but not to skip the medical service system.

More rational pricing structures

According to a People’s Daily Overseas Edition’s report, Mr. Zhao, a Beijing citizen, used to book a nurse to change his father's feeding tube via a home nursing services app. Based on the app's pricing system, he spent 200 yuan (about 30 U.S. dollars) each time, which is about 10 times the price of the same service in a hospital.

Despite the huge price gap, Zhao believes it is worthwhile to shield his father from the exhaustion of transport and pay extra for the nurses’ hard work.

A related survey also revealed that the prices of home nursing care services were much higher, amounting to five to 10 times the price in clinics and hospitals.

NHC noted that the pilot regions should consider local demand and supply, transportation costs, information technology costs, and the service and skills value of nurses, to set up the pricing and payment guarantee mechanism.

“The cutting-edge ‘Internet plus nursing’ is definitely affordable for wealthy patients, but for ordinary people, to what extent they can benefit is the key point we care about most,” said nurse Zhang Di.

“From my perspective, ‘Internet plus nursing’ is a type of continuity of care. Actually, we have been working on this for a long time. For instance, we recommend that our patients follow our WeChat Official Account to access more healthy lifestyle information. More human resources, material resources, and financial support are in demand to push forward ‘Internet plus nursing’,” she said.