Reference and Enlightenment of Long-term Care Assessment System in Taiwan Region of China to Shanghai Long-term Care Insurance

Objective/Meaning Against the backdrop of deepening population aging, needs assessment for long-term care serves as a core component in the operation of the long-term care insurance system. It directly determines the accurate identification of beneficiaries, efficient allocation of service resources, and the security and sustainability of insurance funds. As one of China’s first pilot cities for long-term care insurance, Shanghai has developed a localized assessment system. Nonetheless, there remains room for improvement in refining assessment criteria, enhancing the professionalism of assessors, realizing closed-loop management of procedures, and aligning assessment outcomes with services. China’s Taiwan region entered an aging society at an earlier stage. Its Ten-Year Long-Term Care Plan 2.0 has established an integrated assessment mechanism covering disabled persons and family caregivers, and accumulated mature experience in standardized assessment tools, statutory administration, institutionalized benefits and information-based supervision.

Methods/Procedures Adopting a cross-strait comparative research method, this paper systematically sorts out and extracts replicable and scalable experience from the long-term care assessment system in China’s Taiwan region. Combined with the governance characteristics of Shanghai as a megacity and the reality of its social security system, it proposes an optimization scheme for the long-term care insurance assessment system suited to local demands in Shanghai.

Results/Conclusions The study finds that Shanghai’s long-term care insurance assessment system is faced with inadequate refinement of assessment criteria, lagging development of professional workforce, imperfect supervision and periodic reassessment mechanisms, and poor linkage between assessment and service delivery. Drawing on the mature practices of long-term care assessment in China’s Taiwan region, this paper puts forward localized optimization countermeasures for Shanghai from five dimensions: assessment instruments, personnel qualifications, dynamic reassessment, information supervision, and the matching of assessment results with services. It can offer references for developing long-term care insurance assessment systems in megacities.