Long-term Care

This sickness insurance benefit was introduced by Act No. 310/2017 Coll. with the effect date of 1 June 2018. The purpose of the long-term care allowance is to provide temporary care for a person who requires full-time care. Persons providing this care are entitled to material support through a sickness insurance benefit - long-term care allowance - and the employer is obliged to grant leave without pay unless it can proved that serious operational reasons prevent it.

Under the current legislation, the condition for entitlement to long-term care benefits is at least 7 days of hospitalisation of the person being treated. The amendment proposes to shorten this period to 4 days, which includes the day of admission to and the day of discharge from the inpatient facility. The proposed new legislation responds to the ever-decreasing average length of hospital stay thanks to new treatment methods. The additional expenditure from the state budget is expected to be around CZK 70 million. 

Nursing Allowance

Under the current legislation, nursing benefits are granted only if the caregiver and the person being treated live together in the same household. This does not apply if a child under 10 years of age is being cared for by his/her parent. In the event of the need to care for another family member who does not live in the same household as the employee claiming the nursing allowance, the employee may request leave or leave without pay, which may not always be granted by the employer. These facts are to be changed by an amendment to the Sickness Insurance Act together with proposed changes to the Labour Code.

In view of the above, the amendment to the Act proposes to extend the cases of granting of sickness allowance to a defined circle of relatives also in cases where the condition of keeping a common household of the employee and the treated person is not met. The new scope of persons to be treated should also include those persons who are considered family members in the usual sense. This would make it possible to compensate these persons for at least a partial loss of income as a result of having to stop working. The total impact on the state budget is estimated at approximately CZK 860 million.  

Paternity Benefits

The purpose of this benefit remains the financial security of the father who wants to care for his newborn child at the same time as the mother. The social purpose of this benefit is primarily to strengthen the bond between the child and both parents in the early weeks of the child's life. However, the amendment addresses the situation where a child is hospitalized during the first 6 weeks from the date of birth. The point is that during this period the father is not able to participate in the care of the newborn child, in the running of the household, etc.

The draft amendment to the Act is therefore designed so that in a situation where a child is hospitalized for health reasons on the part of the child or its mother, the father can start paternity leave even later than by the end of the sixth week from the date of birth. In such a case, the father will have a full six-week period in which the child is no longer hospitalised and in which he can start paternity leave. The expected financial impact of the proposed measure is minimal. In this case, there is no new entitlement to the benefit or its payment, but only a shift in time.