Clinic collapse in Bavaria due to Corona: More and more workers are ill – “Never seen it so dramatically”
Created: 06/07/2022, 08:37
By: Sebastian Horsch, Hans Moritz
High corona incidences are reflected in the clinics: Everywhere in Bavaria there is a lack of staff who are ill themselves or who have to take care of infected children.
That has consequences.
Erding/Munich - The healthcare system is complex, but this number explains a huge problem quite simply: On March 10, 2019, 64 employees at the Erdinger Klinikum were ill.
Three years later there were 142 patients, an increase of 120 percent.
The numbers are currently similar.
The remaining staff rebels, overload notices are posted.
Beds are blocked, operations that are not absolutely necessary are postponed.
A five-point plan should remedy the situation.
At a large Munich clinic, according to a doctor who does not want to be named, there are currently only three out of eight operating rooms.
It happens that ongoing operations are canceled due to an emergency.
"And now it's midsummer - and not winter." He has never experienced the shortage of staff so dramatically, says the doctor.
And that runs through almost all hospitals.
Bavaria: Hospitals report a lack of staff - Munich clinic boss takes a position
The five houses of the Munich clinic (Bogenhausen, Harlaching, Neuperlach, Thalkirchner Straße and Schwabing) are currently burdened by the sharp increase in incidence: "Covid infections mainly take place in the private sphere and these employees are then absent for at least five days," says a spokeswoman .
In emergency rooms or intensive care units.
In addition, there are no colleagues who look after their children who have tested positive at home.
Around 100 employees are “regularly” absent each week.
Axel Fischer, head of the Munich clinic, says: "The supply is still guaranteed." But you have to make sure that the infection process and the associated failures do not become too large.
A similar message from the Munich University Hospital: rising sickness rates among staff, selective and temporary bed closures, postponed operations.
A spokeswoman for the Klinikum Rechts der Isar reports that sick leave among employees has recently increased again and that the situation is tense in some wards.
From Starnberg it was already said at the end of June that 30 percent of the intensive care beds could not be operated due to a lack of staff.
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Florian Krötz, chief physician of the medical clinic, notes that staff are migrating, especially in wards that have been heavily burdened by the pandemic: "At some point people will no longer do it."
A doctor takes care of a patient: In some hospitals, planned operations have to be postponed.
© picture alliance/dpa
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Hospital utilization in Bavaria: BKG boss is worried about the autumn festival season
Throughout Bavaria, absenteeism in clinics will have reached a “record level” in 2022, says Roland Engehausen in our newspaper.
The head of the Bavarian Hospital Society (BKG) does not yet assess the situation as dramatically as in Schleswig-Holstein, for example.
"The available capacities in the intensive care units in Bavaria have so far remained stable," says Engehausen.
But he is already worried about looking beyond the summer.
When the autumn festivals begin - not only in Munich - the hospital staff are exposed to a significantly higher risk of infection in their private lives, which is also more difficult to control than in the clinic.
A “drastic situation” due to failures then threatens in the hospitals.
And this at the same time as the burden of corona patients is expected to increase again.
According to Engehausen, there is also a tense financial situation, which causes problems: State support for the treatment of corona patients has almost completely disappeared.
At the same time, material costs – for example for consumables or medical technology – “exploded”.
And unlike many companies, the hospitals, which are often in deficit anyway, cannot pass on the burden of inflation through price increases.
Since the clinics therefore lack the money for overtime compensation, benefits to improve the compatibility of family and work or other measures for employees, there is a risk of further personnel problems - and thus "a cocktail that could also endanger care".
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