Care homes in Slovenia

1. The Social Security Act;
2. rules on social assistance concessions; and
3. rules on engagement in the provision of social services on the basis of a work permit, and further regulations determining the terms and conditions for providing social services in detail.

Yes.

Please note that institutional care for the elderly is provided by (i) state-owned, (ii) privately owned, or (iii) special privately owned care homes.

Yes, state-owned care homes are incorporated as public institutions. Privately owned and special privately owned care homes can be incorporated in any form of a corporate entity under Slovenian law. 

State-owned care homes must have a manager, a management council, and a professional council. If determined with an act of incorporation of a state-owned care home, a professional manager must be named too.

The governing body of a privately owned or a special privately owned care home must comply with the relevant legislation on private companies under Slovenian law. 

To open a privately owned care home, a concession must be obtained, which is granted on the basis of a public tender by the Ministry of Labour, Family, Social Policy and Equal Opportunities or respective municipality. Together with the state-owned care homes, they form a public network of social security services.

A special privately owned care home can be opened if the applicant is granted with a work permit for performing social security services by the Ministry of Labourt, Family, Social Policy and Equal Opportunities. Special privately owned care homes are not included in the public network of social security services.

State-owned care homes may perform other activities if they are directly connected to the main activity of a care home. 

Neither a privately owned nor a special privately owned care home are restricted in the performance of other activities on the local market.

Any social service must be non-profit by law. This means the entire income or any profit must be used for the performance of a care home’s activities.

There are no subsidies offered by the government. Fee subsidies can be awarded on a municipal level. 

The supervision is carried out by the Social Inspection Service, operating within the Labour Inspectorate.

The Human Rights Ombudsman supervises dementia departments.

2,100,126 (source: World Bank)

19.086% (source: World Bank)

102

Up to 3 years

Slovenia does not have a single body that measures the quality of services and brings them all together in one place, like the CQG in the UK.

In both social and health care, several bodies are responsible for monitoring, but the following two are the most important:

1) In the field of social care, this is the Social Affairs Inspection Service (Socialna inšpekcija) which is mainly responsible for monitoring the implementation of social protection laws and regulations and for inspection of the work of public social protection institutions, concessionaires, and legal and natural persons that provide social assistance services. Social inspectors  are responsible for monitoring the operation of care homes for the elderly in accordance with the law (the social side of care homes): whether the price for a particular service is appropriate, whether the home has adequate spatial arrangements, whether the residents are accommodated in the type of care that is appropriate for them, whether they are aware of their rights, and so on. Supervision is carried out as regular supervision (ex officio) and, following a complaint or a petition, as extraordinary supervision.

An inspection may be initiated if we consider that a social care provider is not acting in accordance with the rules governing its tasks and that we have previously exhausted other possibilities for exercising our rights. 

Institutional care for the elderly is also subject to the following controls:

• Ministry of Labour, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities,
• The Ministry of Health,
• The Health Insurance Institute of Slovenia,
• The Court of Auditors.

2) The Health Inspectorate (Zdravstveni inšpektorat) is an inspection body under the Ministry of Health. In order to protect public health, the Health Inspectorate carries out inspections to monitor the implementation of laws and regulations in various health-related areas, including minimum sanitary and health conditions in health care institutions.

The Health Inspectorate is responsible for assessing the adequacy of health care provided to residents of care homes for the elderly. On the basis of the annual inspection plan, the Health Inspectorate carries out routine inspections, emergency inspections based on reports, complaints, notifications, and follow-up inspections to verify that previously identified non-compliances have been corrected.

In addition, the following are also supervisory bodies:

• The Ministry of Health, which carries out administrative supervision in the health sector, including supervision of the implementation of regulations on the provision of health care and health insurance, and of material operations;
• Chambers with public mandate, which carry out professional supervision through consultancy, which includes supervision of the professionalism, quality and safety of the work of the healthcare provider.
• others