NT$100 Billion and 15,051 Service Points: A Compliance-First Web Playbook for Taiwan's Long-Term Care Providers

1. Snapshot of the Sector

People aged 65 and over now exceed 20% of Taiwan's population; Ministry of the Interior statistics put the figure at 4.57 million. Per the Department of Long-Term Care, LTC ABC service points reached 15,051 by the end of 2024, a near 21-fold increase, with coverage rising from 20.30% to 89.9% over the same period. Long-Term Care 3.0 took effect in 2026 with an annual budget above NT$100 billion. Yet there are only around 100,000 care workers, and growth is not keeping up with demand. What is missing is visibility: ten thousand-plus service points chase the same adult children, while their websites stop at "we are warm and caring".

2. What Families Search on Google

Searches are mostly initiated by adult children and carry both location and urgency (commercial intent in brackets):

Taipei day-care centre fees (very high | price check)
Day-care centre recommendations Taichung (high | comparison)
Home-care service application process (high | research)
Four LTC subsidy envelopes, allowance (medium-high | informational)
Respite care eligibility (high | conversion)
Home-nursing agency, tube replacement at home (very high | urgent)
Residential LTC facility monthly fee (very high | high ticket)
Dementia day-care admission (high | specialist)
Discharge planning to LTC handover (very high | urgent)
Care worker recruitment Taipei salary (high | capacity)
Long-term care facility web design (very high | industry term)

3. Mandatory Features

Service point pages: address, transport, hours, staffing, real photos
Fees page: illustrate by CMS level, flagged as indicative only
Login-free eligibility quiz: ask age and self-care, never diagnosis
Visit booking: built for the family, three fields or fewer
1966 hotline guidance: honesty about the public pathway builds trust
Recruitment page: pay, shifts, transport allowance, training
Age-friendly UI: from 18px, contrast 4.5:1, touch targets 44px
LINE entry point: families research during their commute
Compliance-controlled copy modules: ad text is legally constrained
Mobile performance: keep LCP under 2.5 seconds

4. Worth Adding vs. Wasted

Worth the investment	Usually wasted
Subsidy estimator (with disclaimer)	Online card payment of monthly fees
Family-facing progress lookup	Member accounts for the elders
Recruitment page with CV intake	Public live camera feeds
De-identified photo albums	Case stories without consent
Accessibility and font switching	Auto-playing homepage music
Pick-up coverage map	Public lookup of care records

5. Three Budget Tiers (NT$)

Entry, NT$60,000–120,000: single-site website of 8–12 pages, fees explanation, visit booking, recruitment page, baseline accessibility.
Standard, NT$180,000–450,000: multi-site architecture, subsidy estimator, progress lookup, LINE push; suits 3–8 sites.
Advanced, NT$600,000–1,800,000: scheduling and clock-in app, service records, claims data preparation, family app, dashboard.

Monthly costs on top: hosting NT$500–2,000, LINE official account from NT$1,000, SMS about NT$0.7 each; card rates per the ECPay rate table.

6. Technology Choices and Why

Laravel: scheduling, case management and claims are back-office-heavy; deep talent pool, easy handover.
Next.js (SSG + ISR): many service point pages updated infrequently, so static output protects SEO and performance.
Flutter: care worker and family apps share one codebase, halving maintenance.
Field-level encryption plus audit logs: touch health data and you must answer who viewed whose record.
Keep data domestic: avoids cross-border transfer questions at evaluation time.
No continuous tracking: capture location at clock-in only.

7. Six Sector-Specific Traps and Fixes

Advertising beyond scope: Article 29 of the Long-Term Care Services Act limits what a facility may advertise; efficacy and guarantee wording is out. Fix: separate statutory and general zones, review before publishing.
Forms collecting special-category data: Article 6 of the Personal Data Protection Act treats medical records, treatment and health checks as in principle not collectable. Fix: drop diagnosis and medication fields.
Hard-coded subsidies: CMS allowances and co-payment ratios change with announcements. Fix: append "subject to the care manager's assessment and the MOHW payment and reimbursement standards", and keep figures in a config file.
Conflating family and elder: the decision maker is the adult child, the user is the elder. Fix: dual entry points, a family track for fees and an elder track in large type.
Failing accessibility: tenders and evaluations commonly require alignment with the Ministry of Digital Affairs accessibility guidelines. Fix: lock contrast and keyboard operation at design stage.
Miscounting shifts and hours: care workers move between homes, so travel and standby time are hard to compute. Fix: log start, end and travel segments at clock-in, and disclose what location data is used for.

8. The 30/60/90-Day Roadmap

Days 1–30: reconcile your Business Profile with the MOHW long-term care GIS map, install GA4 and Search Console, configure two conversion events.
Days 31–60: publish five local long-tail articles (fees, process, discharge handover, dementia day care), and set an SOP to answer every form within 24 hours.
Days 61–90: review bookings, booking-to-admission conversion, CV volume and hire rate, then expand the best-performing theme into a series.

9. ScriptWalker's Offering

Three anonymised peer sketches

Day-care chain A: five sites share one template, each page with its own hours and pick-up map.
Home-care unit B: the largest homepage button reads "call 1966 first", which raised qualified enquiries.
Home-nursing agency C: tube replacement, wound care and catheter education each get a page, catching urgent searches.

Site website + local SEO + accessibility: from NT$68,000
Multi-site website + estimator + progress lookup: from NT$180,000
Scheduling + clock-in app + claims data preparation: from NT$600,000

10. Frequently Asked Questions

Can our website say "we are cheaper than the others"?

Not advisable. Facility advertising is restricted by the Long-Term Care Services Act. Approved fee schedules may be disclosed, but comparative or exaggerated claims are easily judged misleading.

Will a subsidy estimator cause disputes?

Label the result as an estimate, state that the care manager's assessment and the latest MOHW announcement prevail, and keep level figures in a config rather than hard-coded.

Elders do not use websites, so is age-friendly design needed?

Yes. The reader is usually a child in their sixties, and accessibility is also a tender threshold.

Build or buy a scheduling system?

Under thirty care workers, buy; integrate deeply with claims and payroll only when scale justifies semi-custom work.

11. Decision Checklist and Next Step

☐ Does every service point have its own page with transport details?
☐ Does the fees page say the care manager's assessment prevails?
☐ Do your forms ask for diagnosis or medication?
☐ Has your copy been checked against Article 29 of the LTC Services Act?
☐ Can visitors tell the family entry point from the elder entry point?
☐ Is body text 18px or larger with 4.5:1 contrast?
☐ Does a service point page render within 2.5 seconds?
☐ Have you disclosed the purpose and retention of clock-in location data?
☐ How many bookings last month came from your own website?

Fewer than six ticks means families are deciding on someone else's website: