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Adults Aged 65 Years and Over Reporting Some Limitations in Daily Activities (%), 2019: 37.1%
Adults Aged 65 Years and Over Reporting Severe Limitations in Daily Activities (%), 2019: 15.7%

Source: OECD (2021), Health at a Glance 2021: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/ae3016b9-en.

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“Primary care physicians also perform several tasks related to assessing and verifying health status, including dependency status and other social protection measures linked to health or disability status, along with fitness for employment.”

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“LTC [Long-Term Care] for the elderly, disabled and those suffering from chronic diseases, along with vulnerable populations, is fragmented between Czechia’s health care system (for example, aftercare in hospitals, LTC homes for the severely ill) and social care system (for example, residential homes or day care centres), but is not considered a separate branch of either system. Though overlapping, both systems vary in terms of organization, funding and staffing.”

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“Act no.108/2006 Coll. introduced care allowances into the social care system (on top of existing disability and other disability-related social benefits). Care allowances are scaled into four levels according to the recipient’s degree of dependency. Degrees of dependency are determined by the number of basic living needs that cannot be met without everyday help (out of 10 activities). Care allowance applicants must first undergo an examination by the Czech Social Security Administration (including a fitness for employment evaluation). Depending on the assessed ability to perform independently activities of daily living, the patient may then be eligible for a monthly allowance as depicted in Table 5.5.

“In 2019, personal care allowances amounted to CZK 29.8 billion, up 14.4% (CZK 3.8 billion) from 2018. There were 363,600 allowances paid out monthly in 2019, with 8.5% (30,900) for children up to 18 years of age (MPSV, 2020–2022).There were 67,889 recipients in LTC institutions in 2019, up from 50,380 in 2008. There were 74,208 residential long-term beds in 2019, the highest capacity recorded for Czechia since 2005, though it was only a slight increase from 2008 (68,811; 7.8%) and was far outpaced by the increase in the number of recipients (34.3% increase from 2008 to 2019) (OECD, 2022a).

“Apart from residential settings, comprehensive homecare from SHI [Statutory Health Insurance] is also available. First introduced in Czechia in the early 1990s, comprehensive homecare is an integrated form of care provided to patients within their own social environments. A key component of comprehensive homecare is home health care, which is a particular form of outpatient care provided over a defined time frame by nurses with a physician’s direction. SHI-financed services provided by home health care providers must be strictly medical in nature; non-medical services, such as meal delivery, are not covered, though patients can purchase them using care allowances.”

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“Informal care, mainly from family members, plays a key role in care and care assistance in Czechia. It is estimated that informal caregivers make up more than 80% of those providing LTC [Long-Term Care], and 97% of occasional care. Care mostly comes from women and those aged 55+ (Marešová et al., 2020; Wilja, 2015). The inadequate provision of formal care (and/or high costs in the social care system) drives informal care, hindering labour market participation for caregivers. This has been politically acknowledged within the National Strategy for the Development of Social Services 2016–2025, which estimates that there are up to 300 000 informal caregivers (MPSV, 2015). Following an amendment to Act no.187/2006 Coll., LTC attendance allowances (dlouhodobé ošetřovné) were introduced in mid-2018, though there are strict prerequisites for eligibility. First, the person receiving care must suffer from serious health deterioration, requiring at least 7 days of hospitalization and the need for day care for at least another 30 days; second, the caregiver must have been insured for at least 90 days in the 4 months immediately preceding need for care; third, the entitlement is subject to the approval of the responsible physician. The benefit can be paid for a maximum of 90 days and serves as a partial income substitute while providing informal care. Finally, it is applicable only to those who are employed but need to stay home as said caregiver.”

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“An annual ceiling of CZK 5000 was established in 2008 in line with user fee introduction. To date, this annual cap is used as an OOP payment maximum for prescribed pharmaceutical cost-sharing. The original annual limit of CZK 5000 has been lowered several times for select vulnerable groups and occurred most recently in January 2020 for people with moderate and severe disability, defined as those with a second or third disability level, according to Act no.108/2006 Coll. They were assigned the lowest co-payment limit of CZK 500, which is the same limit as for people aged 70+ (introduced in 2017, when it was CZK 2500 previously). The limit is set at CZK1000 for seniors aged 65–69 and for children below 18 (also reduced from CZK 2500 in 2017); everyone else has an annual cap of CZK 5000.”

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European Commission: Czech Republic – Persons With Disabilities

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Government of Czechia: Government Board for Persons with Disabilities

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Government of Czechia: Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs – Disability

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World Health Systems Facts is a project of the Real Reporting Foundation. We provide reliable statistics and other data from authoritative sources regarding health systems in the US and sixteen other nations.

Page last updated August 10, 2023 by Doug McVay, Editor.