Process
One care need. One regional care request. Clear responses.
You report the care need once. The registered home care services and care providers in the service area are notified. Anyone with capacity and a suitable offer expresses interest. Both sides then agree on the care.
What is posted?
What is posted is the care need: one to three types of care (for the referral, the first one currently counts), place, services required with times, the desired start and, if wished, care preferences. This takes place in the protected area of the platform, not on this website. Posting comes as a simple version in three steps or an extended version in four steps; you can switch between the two. A plausibility check points out inconsistencies without preventing the posting.
The name and address of the person concerned are not recorded – the case is pseudonymised. The platform checks free texts for personal data such as names, dates of birth or health insurance numbers, even if characters are disguised.
Matching care providers see the details for the referral: case number, type of care, postcode and town with the approximate distance from their own location (‘approx. 8 km’), start and planned discharge, care level (Pflegegrad), age group, gender (if stated), diagnoses (as a diagnosis group or with their title), the care situation (such as living situation and mobility), the type of payer, the services required with times and notes, a short description, the referring organisation and its work contact (role, ward, shared mailbox). The short description and the notes must not contain any names, any address or any diagnoses.
Locations without a location subscription see a care need as a preview without an identifiable referring organisation – it is shown as ‘A referring organisation’.
Who is informed?
Registered home care services and care providers are informed whose location profile matches the care need: type of care, service area, open service category, admission requirements, age and type of insurance. The care request also reaches matching locations that have no location subscription.
Each location defines its own service area: as a radius of 1 to 150 kilometres around the postcode of the location (default 25 kilometres), as a list of postcode areas (2 to 5 digits) or nationwide. The distance is measured from the centre of the postcode area. There is no assignment by artificial intelligence.
There is no manual shortlist and no preselection by the platform. A care provider’s personal search filters only change its own view, not who is notified. With ‘No capacity until …’, a care provider only mutes the emails for that period.
What does a response mean?
A care provider can express interest, ask a question or decline. No answer is not a refusal – it simply means there is no response yet.
Important: interest is not yet an acceptance. It is the start of the agreement process.
Each request has one conversation between the referring organisation and the care provider – text only, at most 2,000 characters per message. Messages never appear in emails; the email only points out that there is a new message. Questions and declines are also possible without a location subscription and do not start a subscription.
How are services agreed?
Individual service categories can also be arranged. Whoever posted the care need selects a provider – together with the person concerned. An acceptance only counts as agreed once both sides have confirmed it.
If the selected care provider does not confirm the selection, it is reminded after 24 hours; after 48 hours the selection expires.
What remains open?
Services for which no acceptance has been agreed yet remain visibly open. Pflege Patienten makes requests and responses possible, but does not guarantee care.
If no acceptance has been agreed for any service after 14 days, the care need is closed as ‘not placed’. On day 11, the referring organisation receives an advance warning.
Which data is visible?
Before any selection, matching care providers only see the details for the referral – without the name and address of the person concerned. They already see the work contact of a referring organisation (role, ward, shared mailbox) beforehand. Only the home care service or care provider that has been selected receives the telephone number and email address of private individuals. Name and address are exchanged directly between those involved after the selection – not through the portal. No care provider sees the offers of other care providers. We explain how the data flows on the page Data protection and security.
Read more: Data protection and security
An example from start to finish
- Care need posted: personal care and medical treatment care, home care, start in 10 days.
- Notification: matching registered care providers whose service area covers the place receive a notice.
- Responses: care provider A expresses interest in personal care, care provider B in medical treatment care, care provider C declines.
- Agreement: together with the person concerned, the referring organisation selects care provider A for personal care.
- Result: personal care has been confirmed by both sides. Medical treatment care is still open and remains visible.