In 2024, sickness-related absences from work fell slightly among those insured with the DAK health insurance fund. According to the health insurance company, employees were on sick leave for an average of 20 days. In the previous year, it was 21 days. Most absences were caused by respiratory diseases, musculoskeletal problems and mental illnesses.
With a sickness rate of 5.6 percent, DAK policyholders in Saxony were only slightly above the national average of 5.4 percent. In Saxony-Anhalt, the figure was 6.5 percent - the highest sickness rate of all federal states. In Thuringia, the figure was 6.1 percent.
In its sickness rate analysis, the DAK points out that there was a sharp increase in the number of days absent from work from 2021 to 2022. However, this was mainly due to a new electronic reporting procedure. Since then, doctors' certificates of incapacity for work have been sent directly to the health insurance companies electronically. Since the introduction of this procedure, the annual fluctuations have been rather small.
Data from 54,000 insured persons evaluated
For the current sickness absence report, the Berlin IGES Institute evaluated the data of 54,000 working DAK insured persons in Saxony, according to the health insurance company. Nationwide, the health insurance fund has just under 5.5 million policyholders.
Other health insurance funds also collect data on the sickness rates of their policyholders. For 2023, AOK Plus registered a rate of 6.8 percent of employees unable to work due to illness. Almost 3.5 million people in Saxony and Thuringia are insured with AOK Plus - that's 57 percent of all people with statutory health insurance in the two states. At Barmer, the sickness rate of around 311,000 insured persons in Saxony was 6.4 percent. The figures for 2024 are still pending for these health insurance companies.
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