"Then it ultimately affects the person in need of care": Residents face expulsion from nursing homes due to shortages in offices

The ARD political magazine "Report Mainz" wrote to 478 social welfare offices nationwide. 113 of them provided specific comments on processing times. Around 27 percent of them stated that processing times can take from more than six months to a year. In almost five percent of the responding social welfare offices, processing times sometimes take well over twelve months.

The situation is particularly serious in Berlin-Pankow. There, applicants "sometimes have to wait two or three years." In Wilhelmshaven, for example, processing times are more than a year in "23% of cases," in Tuttlingen, Baden-Württemberg, "currently around 12 months," and in the Wittenberg district, "sometimes over a year."

Geriatrician Prof. Tanja Segmüller of Bochum University of Applied Sciences is critical of the long waiting times. "People need care at short notice. It would be fine if it took a few weeks. But processing times of six months or up to a year are impossible," Segmüller said in an interview with Report Mainz.

At the social welfare office in the Berlin district of Steglitz-Zehlendorf, the average processing time is almost a year. In an interview with Report Mainz, group leader Heinz Sonnenschein explains the reasons: "We're currently still working with paper files. All mail is sent to us in paper form. We print it out and process everything on paper."

The responsible district councilor, Tim Richter, also complains about "high staff turnover" at the social welfare office, "missing documents," "time-consuming asset checks," and a "continuingly rising volume of applications." Currently, there are 360 ​​unprocessed applications in Steglitz-Zehlendorf. The district councilor is dissatisfied with the processing times for "Assistance for Care." "I'm working hard to speed things up and make us more digital. But I don't want to assume that this will happen tomorrow," Richter told Report Mainz.

The president of Germany's largest private nursing association (bpa), Bernd Meurer, is calling for quick solutions. He complains that many nursing homes are coming under pressure due to non-payment from social welfare offices: "In this specific case, a processing time of nine months means that there will be a nine-month shortage of funds to pay staff, and that I, as the facility operator, will have to pre-finance this," says Meurer.

Nursing homes must therefore take action. "Under certain circumstances, the nursing home must threaten to terminate the contract or even issue a notice of termination in order to make it clear to the social welfare offices and also to the relatives that we are deadly serious and that the application must be processed," said the bpa president in an interview with Report Mainz. Geriatrician Tanja Segmüller understands this argument. The state must ensure that people get a place in a nursing home and can keep it. "If state benefits are not paid for months or years, then the person in need of care ultimately suffers," Segmüller said. And in case of doubt, they then end up on the street.

According to the Federal Ministry of Health, by the end of 2023, approximately one in three nursing home residents was dependent on "care assistance." Therefore, the new federal government is proposing a "limitation of care-related personal contributions" in the coalition agreement. A working group will examine this. The goal is to reduce the number of social assistance recipients.

Aging researcher Segmüller considers this wishful thinking: "In fact, I don't see a limitation, but rather an expansion of the co-payment. The costs of long-term care insurance are rising, the need for care in the population is growing, and people need care. This means that additional revenue must definitely be generated to cover these costs."