Home Visits, Not Office Hours: Austria's Styria Region Rethinks Community Care
Published on 10/02/2026 at 15:21 | Editorial boerse-global.de
Mobile nursing teams will fan out across three districts of the Austrian state of Styria starting 1 January 2027, part of a broader shake-up of how the region delivers preventive care advice at the neighbourhood level.
Health minister Karlheinz Kornhäusl unveiled the plan on a Friday, confirming that the existing Community Nursing programme will be folded into the state's standard care provision under a new banner: "Pflegedrehscheibe Plus," roughly translatable as a care hub-plus model. The rollout will be gradual, with the structure itself rebuilt from the ground up rather than simply renamed.
Three districts first, two years of testing
Leibnitz, Murtal and Graz-Umgebung will serve as the initial pilot districts. Officials have pencilled in a two-year trial window to see how the model performs in real conditions before drawing conclusions.
Should those two years go well, the service will expand step by step into other parts of the state. Recruitment is already being planned around that timeline — job advertisements for the new positions are scheduled to go out in autumn 2026, well ahead of the launch, to make sure enough qualified staff are in place.
At the heart of the concept is outreach. Qualified nursing staff attached to the hubs will work on the move, carrying out home visits and delivering preventive care directly to people in their own living rooms. The aim is to spot emerging needs early, take pressure off both those requiring care and their relatives, and help people stay in familiar surroundings for as long as possible.
Who pays, and who employs
The reform also rewrites the funding and employment arrangements. Community Nursing used to be organised through individual municipalities; from 2027 the state itself will shoulder the full cost. Nursing professionals will be hired directly by the care hubs, which will be based at the district authority offices (Bezirkshauptmannschaften).
That shift spells the end of dedicated municipal subsidies — existing community-level services will no longer receive support. Community Nursing originally drew on European Union funding, but that financing stream ran out in 2024. To bridge the gap until the new model takes effect, the state of Styria guaranteed funding through 2026 so activities could continue uninterrupted.
A second measure for Graz's children's hospital
Alongside the mobile care changes, Kornhäusl presented another piece of the region's health-system relief effort. A portal outpatient clinic will again be set up this year at the children's hospital in Graz. Run by paediatricians in private practice, it is intended to ease the pressure on the hospital's inpatient units.
