[Need for rehabilitation and application behavior]

The need for rehabilitation is not absolute and given quality. Determination of the need for rehabilitation depends on various criteria, e.g., the case history and certain legally standardized medical prerequisites. Both the regulation of rehabilitation expenditures and different types of personal excess coverage may be interpreted as efforts on the part of social policy to introduce additional controls (i.e., alongside the medical prerequisites) of the need for rehabilitation. Since rehabilitation benefits are only granted in case the insured has applied for, the demand for personal excess coverage might cause a certain selection of financially powerful rehabilitees. Recent cost-cutting legislation, which inter alia included strict budgeting of rehabilitation expenditures and increased personal excess coverage, had entailed a considerable decline in the number of applications for rehabilitation in 1996 and 1997. Several pension insurance funds started questioning their insured to examine the general interest in using rehabilitation services. The results show a strong need for rehabilitation in the group of the older insured (aged 40 and over), however, only 35% to 40% of the insured in subjective need for rehabilitation intend to file an application for rehabilitation and an even smaller number of insured actually apply for rehabilitation. Major impediments to applying for rehabilitation mentioned are job uncertainty as well as the increased personal excess coverage under the recent austerity legislation.