Court: "Unfair to reclaim long-term care benefit costs for making nursing home laundry staff do cleaning"

A court ruling has determined that it was unjust to reclaim long-term care benefit costs on the grounds that a sanitation worker at a senior care facility performed cleaning duties instead of laundry, which is their primary task.

According to the legal community on the 19th, the Seoul Administrative Court, Administrative Division 6 (Presiding Judge Lee Ju-young) partially ruled in favor of plaintiffs A and another, who operate a senior care facility, in a lawsuit against the National Health Insurance Corporation seeking cancellation of the reclaiming of long-term care benefit costs. The court ordered the cancellation of over 7.2 million won of the approximately 738 million won reclaimed by the Corporation from A and others in August 2021.

A and another have been operating a senior care facility with more than 30 residents in Yongin-si, Gyeonggi Province since 2018. The Corporation reclaimed about 738 million won in long-term care benefit costs based on an on-site investigation conducted by Yongin-si in 2021. The reason was that sanitation workers B and another primarily performed cleaning and other ancillary tasks instead of their core laundry duties.

In response, A and others filed an administrative lawsuit, arguing that both laundry and cleaning fall within the scope of the sanitation workers' duties.

The court accepted the care facility’s argument, stating, "Considering the operation type of the senior care facility, the types of tasks sanitation workers must perform, and the content and proportion of laundry and cleaning duties, it is difficult to conclude that sanitation workers must primarily perform laundry tasks."

The court further explained, "The notice on standards for providing long-term care benefits initially included a provision stating that 'sanitation workers primarily perform laundry duties and may also perform cleaning and environmental hygiene management tasks,' which was later removed. The legislative intent behind this amendment was to reduce the workload of care workers and improve the quality and level of services. Therefore, regulations regarding the scope of sanitation workers' duties should be interpreted in line with this legislative intent."

It added, "It is also difficult to conclude that requiring sanitation workers to primarily perform laundry duties contributes more to reducing the workload of care workers or benefits the residents of care facilities more than having them perform both laundry and cleaning duties."

However, the court sided with the Corporation regarding approximately 7.2 million won of the reclaimed long-term care benefit costs related to nurse C, employed by the care facility, who used paid leave resulting in insufficient working hours but still claimed additional pay for extra nurse deployment. The court deemed this reclaiming appropriate.

The court stated, "Even in cases where actual work by the employee did not occur, the exceptional recognition of such working hours for payment of long-term care benefit costs must be interpreted strictly."