Two senior citizens eat at a restaurant in Lanzhou, Gansu province, in 2012. They ordered their meals through a virtual nursing home, which offers discount prices to elderly people.[Pei Qiang/ for China Daily]

In-home nursing is emerging as a new choice in easing the pressure of China's aging population.

This week, the Chengguan district Virtual Nursing Home in Lanzhou city of Northwest China's Gansu province announced that it will incorporate more healthcare options as the services of this in-home care agency enjoy growing popularity.

According to local government data, by the end of 2012, more than 220,000 seniors had accessed the services of the agency since it began operating in 2009.

In-home care agencies, also dubbed "virtual nursing homes," guarantee similar services as brick-and-mortar nursing homes. But they are delivered directly to people's addresses instead of in residential nursing facilities, which are generally very crowded.

The trend is taking on prominence as China grays more rapidly and conventional homes for the elderly face a shortfall in resources.

China now has a staggering 200 million people aged 60 and over. The number accounts for 14 percent of the total population, and is expected to surge to 400 million in 2050.

But the country had a mere 40,000 nursing homes by the end of 2013. With less than 3.9 million beds available in those facilities, pressure from the glut is overwhelming.

It is in this context that virtual nursing homes have sprung up in provinces including Jiangsu, Gansu, Hunan and Anhui, offering convenience and slashed demand on resources. The first opened in Suzhou in east China's Jiangsu Province in 2007.

Residents have a buffet at Hongheyuan, a high-end nursing home in Haikou, Hainan province, Jan 22, 2013. The nursing home has hired nutritionists and chefs to make healthy food. [Photo/Icpress.cn]

EMERGING INDUSTRY

Governments at all levels in China are taking pains to guide the development of virtual homes for the elderly.

In 2012, the municipality government of the northern city of Tianjin blazed the trail by teaming up with a domestic service provider called Emotte, extending the company's broad range of services to local communities, including house cleaning and meal deliveries.

In the past two years, a total of 14 traditional nursing homes in Tianjin have jumped on the bandwagon of offering door-to-door services to local seniors, a move which has proved economical while serving more customers.

The fledgling industry has won much praise from the aged, who tend to be more comfortable in the familiar environment of their own homes than in crowded nursing facilities.

Yin Yanbang, an 86-year-old Tianjin resident, said that he prefers the new model because he can stay at home and enjoy domestic services by simply making a phone call to the service provider.

Lin Shoujie, another Tianjin resident, shares the same view. Meal deliveries have saved him the trouble of cooking and contributed to his recovering health thanks to the nutritious food.

Li Ling, a carer who works for Emotte, attributed the company's popularity to its system of performance-related pay.

"I never shirk my responsibilities because my salary is directly linked with my performance," Li said, explaining that she gets her monthly income only after her client has given positive feedback to her employer.

Home-based nursing can also comfort old people's children working far away because they know that their parents are safe and sound at home and carefully looked after, according to Chen Li, an official with the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the Communist Party of China Central Committee.

LURKING PROBLEMS

However, while the burgeoning industry is booming, it also faces a thicket of barriers that might stymie its future development.

"Some companies or nursing homes have worked with government bodies, while others just work on their own," said Fu Yanjuan, who is in charge of Emotte's branch in Tianjin.

Fu said that without sufficient tie-up with government bodies, it would be difficult for agencies like Emotte to win trust from the elderly.

Li Jiajun, president of Tianjin University, believes governments should initiate favorable policies and pump extra subsidies into these agencies as well as conventional care homes to assist their development.

"But governments are not omnipotent, and that means families and society should make joint efforts in the wake of a graying nation," Li added.

Zhang Surong, managing director of Huaxiajinguo Community Service Co. Ltd., a domestic services company in Anshan City of northwest China's Liaoning Province, agrees.

Zhang said that China should step up efforts in training staff in this field, urging that "the government could consider subsidizing staff to cut the costs on the side of traditional nursing homes and companies."

In addition, authorities should ramp up supervision and up the threshold for domestic service providers to ensure quality, suggested Li Jiajun.