The financial situation in many hospitals in Germany is bad.
A clinic in Hamburg is now taking an austerity measure.
However, this only affects cash patients.
Hamburg – Clinics in Germany are under pressure.
During the corona pandemic, many surgeries had to be postponed or cancelled.
In addition, the running costs have increased in all areas due to inflation.
At the beginning of January, the German Hospital Society (DKG) warned of a clinic bankruptcy wave in 2023. Clinics cannot simply pass on higher costs to their customers – i.e. patients.
Hamburg clinics have to save money: butter for cash patients deleted
Saving is announced at the clinics.
A quite sophisticated savings measure is now hitting health insurance patients in clinics in Hamburg.
When it comes to eating, the red pencil is applied here.
Instead of butter, the patients are only served more margarine for breakfast or dinner.
This affects seven Hamburg clinics of the Asklepios Group.
This is reported by the
Hamburger Abendblatt
.
For more than two months, the butter has been taken off the bread for patients with statutory health insurance.
A switch from yoghurt butter to margarine took place at the beginning of December.
However, private patients can continue to enjoy the butter.
"Butter remains a matter of taste"
According to the Hamburg clinics, there are cost savings of 330,000 euros per year.
Since the purchase price for the yoghurt butter has more than doubled.
"Butter remains a matter of taste," says Asklepios spokesman Mathias Eberenz in the Abendblatt.
"It is not relevant to the medical treatment process and the success of recovery." The quality of medical care remains unaffected.
Despite the significantly increased expenses, the clinic would have to make do with the existing flat rates, explains Eberenz in the Abendblatt.
It just hits the cash patients.
However, the savings are just a drop in the bucket.
Asklepios can probably only slightly cushion the additional expenditure of 2.6 million euros per year.
But the cost screw has to be turned somewhere.
RTL has learned that there have been no complaints from patients because of the lack of butter.
On the contrary, the clinic would increasingly get questions about a more vegetarian, vegan-oriented diet.
(ml)
Incidentally, butter did quite poorly in the current Öko-Test: 17 of 20 products in the test rated “poor” or “insufficient”, including five with an organic seal.
"Most are not worth their money."
