Federal Health Minister Nina Warken has called on the states to lower building standards for care homes. The goal is to reduce nursing care costs.
Warken told the Funke Mediengruppe newspapers that legal requirements for care homes should be reduced to the minimum. She criticized excessive space rules for rooms and common areas as too inflexible.
The minister also defended planned changes to supplements for care home residents. These supplements had doubled to over seven billion euros between 2022 and 2025. Higher relief levels are now to start six months later each time.
The plan is intended to relieve nursing care funds by 2.6 billion euros next year. Warken rejected criticism from the Städtetag about additional costs for municipalities and pointed to other relief measures such as annually dynamized benefits.
