Information on the merger of health insurance funds

With effect from 01.01.2020, the nine regional health insurance funds will become Austrian Health Insurance Fund (ÖGK) merged. As a result of this merger, the previous regional health insurance funds will be converted into mere regional offices of the new ÖGK.

According to official information from the regional health insurance funds, the following framework conditions apply to the merger of the cash registers:

• The current reporting and contribution obligations will remain unchanged from 2020. Social security reporting must continue to be carried out via ELDA. The processing of reports, clearing cases and payments will take place at the respective regional offices of the ÖGK.
• The previous Contribution accounts are retained. Registration of employees must continue to be carried out with the correct regional office according to the place of employment.
• Apart from this, however, for every company, even if it has contribution accounts in several federal states (e.g. companies with branches or subsidiaries in different federal states), there should only be more a single regional office as a point of contact for registration, insurance and contribution matters to be responsible (e.g. for reminders, instalment approvals, reporting sanctions etc.), specifically the regional office corresponding to the company's registered office.

The regional health insurance funds emphasise that the merger will not incur any conversion costs for companies. We will have to wait and see whether and how the announced concept will work in practice from 2020 onwards.