[Care required by disabled persons: are official severe disability statistics good enough for requirement analyses?]

The appropriateness of the German Official Severe Disability Statistics for determining the amount of care needed by disabled persons is a controversial issue and therefore in the focus of this article. The criteria for determining the care required by disabled persons are pointed out. Data on prevalence and incidence exemplify that Official Severe Disability Statistics is only partially appropriate for assessing future care requirements. The problems become particularly obvious in topics of data collection, data processing and data storage. The deletion of the statistical data at regular intervals of five years makes long term prognosis almost impossible. While the problems concerning data processing and data storage could be solved by few modifications, the improvement of data collection could only be achieved by including and applying the International Classification of Functioning (ICF) of the WHO.