[Empirical analysis of work flow in inpatient nursing homes for the elderly]

The paper starts by offering a short overview of the state of implementation of the 2nd stage of the newly introduced German Long-Term-Care-Insurance (Pflegeversicherung). It continues to present results of a detailed descriptive analysis of employee activities in (long-term-care-)nursing-homes, differentiating by severity of the patients' condition. Surprisingly nurses spend a large part of their time (40%) on other than nursing activities. The time spent with individual patients varies considerably with sex and the main diagnosis; thus significantly more time is spent on (basic and treatment-related) nursing care for male patients. Age per se does not appear to influence the time required for taking care of a patient.