Nursing care at home, known as häusliche Krankenpflege in German, is provided to avoid or shorten hospital stays or ensure the success of medical treatment.
More details
To be entitled to nursing care at home, there must be nobody in your household who can perform this care. In addition, 1 of the following conditions must be met:
- Hospital treatment is needed but you cannot be admitted to hospital.
- Home nursing care will prevent or shorten hospital treatment.
- Nursing care at home is necessary to achieve the medical treatment goal.
- Care at home is required for up to 4 weeks due to a severe illness, especially following hospital treatment.
Your doctor will check whether the conditions are met and prescribe this care for you if they consider it medically necessary.
My doctor has prescribed home nursing care for me. What do I do next?
You first need to arrange for this care to be provided by a professional nursing service. Use our German-language online search, the TK-Pflegelosten to find a suitable care provider.
If you need further assistance, your doctor or we at the TK will be happy to help you find a suitable local service.
Send us the original and follow-up prescriptions from your doctor to the below address straight away so that we can approve this nursing care:
Techniker Krankenkasse
20902 Hamburg
(no street name and house number are required)
Before sending the prescription, have it completed by your nursing service. Once we have checked the prescription, we will send you our decision and inform the nursing service.
What kinds of home nursing care are available?
- Treatment care (Behandlungspflege): This includes medical tasks such as bandage changes and giving injections. This time of care is available as long as medically necessary.
- Basic care (Grundpflege): If this is considered medically necessary, you can also receive support with personal hygiene (washing, showering, teeth cleaning etc.) and eating. Please note that basic care is limited to a maximum of 28 days.
- Household support / domestic help (Hauswirtschaftliche Versorgung): Help with meal preparation, shopping, and cleaning. This is provided if you are so seriously ill that you are temporarily unable to run your household and there is nobody in the home who can take on this job for you. The requirements for this vary depending on whether you have children or not .
Important: you may only receive basic care and household support if you require treatment care. Exception: if you have a serious illness, especially after being in hospital, you might need basic care and household support, even if you do not require treatment care. In this care, we'll pay for up to 4 weeks of care, provided you don't need long-term care. Do you have further questions? Our English-speaking consultants can best be reached from Mon. to Fri. 8.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m. on +49 40 - 46 06 62 53 00
What do I have to pay for home nursing care?
If you are 18 or over and not exempt from paying statutory co-payments, you pay a co-payment towards this care. This amounts to 10 EUR per prescription plus 10% of the actual costs. This applies for a maximum of the first 28 days per calendar year. After that, you will no longer have to pay any co-payments.