Hospital GmbH: "Change as an opportunity"

Created: 03/08/2022, 12:00 p.m

By: Elke Robert

One argument against two hospitals is the increasingly difficult search for staff - as in this campaign at Marienplatz.

© es (archive)

"Shape the future instead of clinging to the past!" With this request, the hospital GmbH turns to the "Action Alliance Pro Hospital Schongau" in an open letter.

Only fears are constantly repeated without going into facts.

Schongau – The “Action Alliance Pro Hospital Schongau”, which is fighting to preserve the houses in Schongau and Weilheim, has already addressed the hospital GmbH in several open letters.

Now the company is also responding in an open letter.

The undersigned, district administrator Andrea Jochner-Weiß as chairwoman of the supervisory board and GmbH managing director Thomas Lippmann, express understanding that the action alliance fears a restriction of acute inpatient care in Schongau after the completion of a central district hospital.

Alliance only repeats the fears without going into the facts

However, it is not very effective to keep repeating fears without going into the data that has already been published.

"We therefore advocate that facts guide the discussion when it comes to the future design of hospital care in our district," the letter says.

Nothing has changed in the two main messages of the expert Professor Norbert Roeder: The relocation of the acute inpatient location in Schongau has little impact on acute emergency care.

Most emergency patients with a heart attack or stroke from the entire district are already being treated in Weilheim, because the heart catheter is available there and blood clots can also be removed from the cerebral vessels in stroke patients together with the specialists from the Munich University Hospital Rechts der Isar (MRI). .

According to reports, there are not enough staff for both hospitals

The other crucial point of the expert: You will no longer get enough medical or nursing staff to provide two identical locations.

"This is a nationwide fact," says the GmbH.

On the other hand, the argument of the action alliance is correct that, according to the hospital simulator of the statutory health insurance companies, the distances without the hospital in Schongau are too far for too many people.

However, the comparison with the GKV hospital simulator lags if you simply hide the Schongau hospital, because a possible new building is of course not taken into account in the simulation.

If the existing houses in Schongau and Weilheim-Stadt were replaced by a new district hospital in a more central location such as near Peißenberg, according to expert 98,

1 percent of the residents in the district can reach a hospital within 30 minutes by car.

The requirement is that the nearest hospital can be reached within a 30-minute drive.

For citizens from Western communities, travel time may take longer than 30 minutes

The accessibility of care for patients with heart attacks and strokes is also improving - no longer travel to Weilheim-Stadt, but only to the assumed locations Weilheim-Süd, Polling or Peißenberg.

As evidence, the GmbH uses the simulated times of a route planner, the routes were driven to check.

Western communities such as Schwabsoien, Bernbeuren, Altenstadt, Ingenried or Burggen were considered.

According to the GmbH's real-time measurement, it only takes a little more than 30 minutes by car from Bernbeuren to Weilheim-Süd, with the journey to the Peißenberg site taking just under 26 minutes.

"Don't dilute real facts with inaccuracy"

The open letter urged “in all urgency not to dilute real facts with inaccuracies”.

The summary of the GmbH: Some patients from the Schongau region would have to travel a little longer to a new acute inpatient hospital than it does today.

But everyone would achieve “an adequate and sustainable supply within a tolerable travel time”.

"We would like you to see changes as an opportunity and less as a threat," was the request from the action alliance.

Most recently, the group of local residents founded in November launched a petition entitled “Hands off our hospitals”.

By Monday noon, almost 1,500 supporters had already signed.