Germany Advances Reforms in Health and Care Policy: Simplifying Long-Term Care and Revising Sick Leave Rules
Germany is progressing on key health and care reforms, including simplifying long-term care laws, loosening sick leave notification rules, and evaluating care service efficiency to address systemic challenges.
- • Baden-Württemberg approved a draft law to simplify long-term care and participation rules, aiming to reduce bureaucracy and enhance trust.
- • Rhineland-Palatinate's Health Minister supports extending sick leave notifications up to two weeks to lower medical bureaucracy.
- • Federal Ministry's 'Zukunftspakt Pflege' working group is scrutinizing care efficiency while maintaining current care levels and aiming to stabilize costs.
- • Federal Health Minister emphasizes need for compromises and full federal funding for healthcare costs related to social benefits.
Key details
On October 14, 2025, significant reform proposals in German health and care policy gained momentum, focusing on simplifying long-term care regulations, revisiting sick leave notification rules, and enhancing the efficiency of care services. These initiatives aim to tackle bureaucratic complexity and financial sustainability challenges within the sector.
The Minister Council of Baden-Württemberg approved a draft law called the Participation and Care Quality Law (TPQG), a major step toward reforming the Housing, Participation, and Care Law (WTPG). Minister President Winfried Kretschmann emphasized that the reform intends to "simplify, flexibly adjust, and eliminate unnecessary regulations." The Social and Health Minister Manne Lucha highlighted this as a "brave step towards modern home law" that reduces bureaucracy and enhances trust among care providers, supervisory authorities, and residents. Notably, ambulant supported living communities will no longer be regulated by the law, allowing more practical flexibility, and resident participation rules will be simplified to foster engagement in care facilities. Inspections will be tailored so that well-managed facilities face fewer checks, enabling authorities to concentrate on those with quality issues, shifting focus from administrative burdens to quality care and prevention [100561].
In parallel, Rhineland-Palatinate's Health Minister Clemens Hoch advocated for loosening sick leave notification rules. Supporting proposals by Andreas Gassen to make sick leave mandatory only after the fourth day, Hoch suggested extending sick leave notification discussions to two weeks, a move aimed at reducing bureaucracy for healthcare providers. Hoch also criticized Federal Health Minister Nina Warken's financial stabilization plans for statutory health insurance, warning such proposals could threaten hospital reforms and stressing that healthcare costs for citizens on social benefits should be fully federally funded to relieve statutory insurance by about ten billion euros [100559].
Further, Federal Health Minister Wurken announced that an ongoing working group, "Zukunftspakt Pflege," established in July, is conducting an efficiency review of care services to address financial challenges. The group plans to maintain the current care level system, including care level 1, while striving to avoid further increases in personal care contributions. Warken emphasized the necessity for compromises and leveraging improvement potentials in care provision to ensure sustainability, with final reform recommendations expected by December [100555].
These developments reflect Germany’s comprehensive approach to reforming health and care policy amid financial and bureaucratic pressures, balancing regulatory simplification, cost efficiency, and improved quality of care.