Governor Kim Visits Household of Elderly Living Alone

As a harsh winter continues with consecutive cold waves, Gyeonggi Province Governor Kim Moon-soo is making field visits to elderly residents living alone in the province who are enduring a difficult winter.

The province announced on the 16th that Governor Kim Moon-soo will visit a household of an elderly person living alone located in Geomo-dong, Siheung City this afternoon at 2 p.m. to conduct one-day home visit health nursing activities.

Governor Kim will assist home-visit nurses and physical therapists in taking blood pressure and diabetes tests, and will then carry out flooring replacement and weather-stripping vinyl installation work. Following this, Governor Kim will visit the Geomo-dong Senior Center, where he plans to demonstrate winter health management exercises together with a physical therapist.

The home-visit health management project assigns eight elderly residents living alone per health center staff member, and conducts home-visit health management services over eight annual visits along with educational counseling on depression prevention and development of regular lifestyle habits.
After conducting a pilot program in 2011 with two health centers in Gunpo City and Dongducheon City targeting 178 elderly residents living alone, the province expanded the home-visit health management project this year to cover 3,410 elderly residents living alone across 45 health centers in the province.

According to the province's report on the results of implementing the home-visit health management project, monthly medical expenses for elderly residents living alone decreased by 10,395 won, from 63,385 won before the project implementation to 52,990 won after implementation. The number of hospital visits also decreased from 2.9 times prior to the project to 2.6 times after implementation.