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At the latest since the outbreak of the corona pandemic, there is hardly an issue that affects people in the country more than clinical care, which the health system can hardly afford to finance. In 2021, the statutory health insurance (GKV) spent 85.9 billion euros on the hospital sector, which corresponds to a 30.1 percent share of total expenditure.
“We are all patients, if not acutely then in the course of life, at the latest in old age. The hospital reform is about our innermost affairs,” said Prof. Bodo Hombach, President of the Brost Academy, opening the event on April 20th the NRW health minister Karl-Josef Laumann, the medical director of the Essen Mitte clinics, Prof. Dr. Andreas du Bois and the Vice President of the German Hospital Society (DKG), Dr. Gundula Werner moderated by science journalist Dr. Christina Berndt discussed “The hospital of the future”.
The reform planned by the federal government is not only controversial among experts, it also triggers uneasy feelings among those present in the packed Erich Brost Pavilion. In his welcome, Professor Bodo Hombach clearly struck a chord with the audience.
What the main speaker Karl-Josef Laumann (CDU) came up with for the reform of the hospitals in North Rhine-Westphalia could let the citizens sleep better if his plans are successfully implemented. The NRW Minister of Health also sees an overdue need for reform in the hospitals, whose standards are to be defined in the future via 64 performance groups, backed by appropriate quality criteria. Laumann: “We brought all those involved, doctors, nursing staff and the operators of the clinics, to one table in order to find consensus-based solutions for the future.”
“One of the first successes of the NRW reform that has already been initiated is that the clinics are talking to each other intensively. This is how we avoid duplicate structures and senseless competition,” agrees Prof. Dr. Andreas du Bois, medical director of the Essen Mitte clinics, addressed the Minister of Health.
Laumann’s main points of criticism of the federal government’s proposals: “Hospital planning is a matter for the federal states, we cannot simply impose a federal template on the existing structures.” In terms of content, the reform plans differ in terms of the qualitative orientation towards the services of the clinics (NRW) or the classification into different “quality levels”, as recommended by Lauterbach’s commission of experts. For top levels II and III, the hospitals would then need a maternity ward and a stroke unit, and in level III even a helipad!
In the evaluation of Dr. Gundula Werner, Vice President of the German Hospital Society (DKG), the federal government’s considerations include another birth defect. “The main mistake is to regard Germany as a white area in which the clinics of the future are simply placed. Regional structures are completely ignored. For Thuringia it would mean that nine of the 18 maternity clinics would have to close,” says the managing director of the Kliniken Altenberger Land.
In NRW, 52 percent of all expectant mothers would have to look for another clinic for the birth, and eight of the ten largest breast cancer centers should no longer treat them as they have been used to. Laumann: “We don’t need these levels!” He would also like to give the small regional hospitals a chance to survive “out of respect for the decades of service,” despite the urgency of a reform. “Not everything will work 100 percent, as our simulations have already shown. For example, all university hospitals in NRW are currently doing badly. With a mix of different service areas, however, it could be possible for all hospitals to be in the black.” However, this requires synergy effects instead of competition between the clinics.
“I am very confident that in the end there will be a reform that, together with our plans in North Rhine-Westphalia for a new hospital planning, can improve many things for the benefit of the patients.” said NRW Health Minister Karl-Josef Laumann (CDU).
More information and pictures of the event are available at: https://broststiftung.ruhr/mit-kosmetischen-korrekturen-ist-es-nicht-getan/
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Original content from: Brost Foundation, transmitted by news aktuell
