Incapacity for Work due to Disease or Injury in the CR

Introductory note

Contents

The development of sickness and accidents rates in the Czech Republic in the 1st half of 2007 which is based on the results of statistical survey Nem Úr 1-02 can be briefly characterised the following way:

With the year-on-year increased number of insured persons by 2.2%, new notified cases of incapacity for work in total (i.e. due to disease plus accidents at work and other accidents) per 100 insured persons went significantly down from 33.31 in the 1st half of 2006 to 32.68 (1.9% y-o-y).

The average duration per case of incapacity for work decreased from 34.43 in the 1st half of 2006 to 32.97 (-4.2 %), however it is still high (in the long-term comparison it had been increasing since 1990, when it was 18.39 days).

In consequence of the relative degrease of the new notified cases and the decrease of the average duration of incapacity at work the average percentage of incapacity for work represented by the total indicator of sickness and accident rates decreased from 6.336 in the 1st half of 2006 to 5.941 in the observed period (index 93.8).

In the 1st half of 2007, there were 268 372 of insurants absent from their work place due to incapacity for work because of disease and accident in the Czech Republic, of which 243 441 due to disease, 9 732 due to an accident at work and 15 199 insurants due to other accidents.

The following graph shows the development of the average percentage of incapacity for work during the past three years including the development in the 1st half of the given year. It is particularly clear from the graph that the percentage of incapacity for work in Q1-Q2 was always higher than the percentage for the whole year. This trend applies also in the long-term view and is also among other things affected by a higher sick rate in the first months of the year.

During the observed periods the percentage of incapacity for work was the highest in the 1st half of 2005, when following its marked decrease in 2004 due to changes in the calculations of sickness benefits (amendment to Act No 54/1956 Coll., on health insurance, in effect since 1 January 2004), this indicator increased to 6.712%. During 2006 the percentage of incapacity for work decreased again from 6.336 in the 1st half of 2006 to 5.814 in 2006. In the 1st half of 2007, there was a slight increase however, as clear from the graph, compared to the two previous half years the value was lower (5.941%).