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After the strains of the pandemic, many hospitals are now suffering from inflation and high energy prices
Photo: Daniel Bockwoldt/ dpa
Hospitals and nursing homes are under pressure nationwide.
In addition to the lack of staff, they are now also suffering from rising energy costs and high inflation.
The Greens are calling on the federal and state governments to help the institutions quickly.
"Without a comprehensive package of measures, health care facilities in all parts of the country are threatened with insolvency due to a lack of liquidity," says a paper on measures by the Greens in the Bundestag.
It is available to SPIEGEL.
In it, the politicians around the health policy spokesman Janosch Dahmen demand an immediate energy cost compensation by the federal government.
Inpatient care and health care facilities are to be reimbursed for increases in energy costs for an initial period of six months.
In addition, the Greens' crisis plan provides for a short-term inflation cost brake: the federal and state governments should each absorb half of cost increases, for example for medical products or food, retrospectively from July 2022 for an initial period of nine months.
"This is particularly important for the care facilities, which normally pass on the costs for accommodation and meals to the residents," the paper says.
"The economic situation in many German clinics and care facilities is currently deteriorating dramatically," said Green politician Dahmen to SPIEGEL.
"After two and a half years of the pandemic, many hospitals and homes are suffering from a growing shortage of staff on the one hand and, on the other hand, are also reaching the limits of their financial capacity to act due to the sharp increase in energy prices." so Dammen.
To this end, the Green politicians are also counting on rapid structural reforms in the hospital landscape and the establishment of a climate protection fund for the health care system.
"On average, a hospital bed already consumes as much energy as a single-family home," write MPs Dahmen, Maria Klein-Schmeink, Armin Grau and Kordula Schulz-Asche.
The aim must therefore be "to accelerate the path to a climate-neutral health care system and to quickly reduce the dependence of health care facilities on fossil fuels".
According to the German Hospital Society, around 40 percent of hospitals currently see their economic situation in such jeopardy that there is a risk of insolvency.
She calls for rapid inflation compensation by the federal government.
Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) promised the clinics and nursing homes an aid package at the beginning of September;
Details are not yet available.
Saxony-Anhalt's health minister Petra Grimm-Benne, currently chairwoman of the state health ministers' conference, is also in favor of federal aid: "The hospitals are in a difficult, even precarious situation," the SPD politician told SPIEGEL.
The rising energy costs would hit the hospitals, which are already heavily burdened by the pandemic management, hard again.
"That's why I support the urgent demands for help from the federal government," said Grimm-Benne.
The health minister warned: »The financial situation of the hospitals must not lead to a cold structural adjustment that is only based on the economic situation.
That would hit the municipal and smaller houses first.”