Member of the Bundestag Erich Irlstorfer considers a hospital reform to be inevitable.
With regard to the Lauterbach plans, however, he formulated a big but.
Gammelsdorf
- The hospital reform planned by the traffic light coalition in Berlin, the draft of the nursing care reform, the general practitioner care in constituency 214 - for a health politician like the CSU member of the Bundestag Erich Irlstorfer there is currently no shortage of topics.
And those were reasons enough for a press conference that the member of the Bundestag had invited to Gammelsdorf on Monday.
Irlstorfer left no doubt that a hospital reform was inevitable.
The big but: The draft presented by Health Minister Karl Lauterbach and categorizing the clinics into four levels from basic to maximum care is “an inadequate paper”.
Hospitals would face bankruptcy, the federal government needed a 100 billion structural fund for the clinics, and there shouldn't be a complete system change.
He doubts whether the Freisinger Klinikum would be one of the 53 hospitals in Bavaria that would be downgraded to basic outpatient-inpatient care, as the hospital has positioned itself too well for this in terms of training.
But he and the CDU/CSU parliamentary group are also concerned that all clinics survive.
Four points are particularly important to Irlstorfer
The nursing care reform is a little further along – namely at the level of a draft bill.
Some things are good, but the draft law falls well short of expectations, does not implement points of the coalition agreement and does not bring any relief.
He himself, according to Irlstorfer, has therefore drawn up a paper on improving care, which will soon be discussed at a closed conference of the CDU/CSU.
Important points: First: an improvement in working conditions - for example concepts for reducing hours so that experienced nursing staff who are physically unable to do the work can be used for instruction and training;
or an overtime regulation that enabled young workers to work overtime in the form of both net and gross;
secondly: support for caring relatives (e.g. through a relief budget);
thirdly: a reform of temporary work, which should really only be an auxiliary tool in emergency situations and not a permanent solution, otherwise there would be "chaos" in the nursing homes;
and fourth: the acquisition of foreign, well-trained nursing staff in the form of orderly and deliberate immigration.
The situation with general practitioners is “sometimes very dramatic”
A perennial favorite is primary care.
According to Irlstorfer, the problem is not the provision of sufficient cash register seats, but the task of “filling them with life”, i.e. finding a doctor.
"These calls are getting louder and louder," the member of the Bundestag observed.
The figures from his constituency prove this: The standard care is theoretically guaranteed practically everywhere - apart from Moosburg, where there are still 6.5 branch offices for general practitioners.
The Free State is not standing idly by in the face of this "sometimes very dramatic situation", emphasized the deputy: A three-year study by the TUM is being supported, which is investigating the possible causes of the shortage of doctors, and since 2023 the establishment of general practitioners at 60 has been supported 000 euros (a branch practice with 15,000 euros) have already helped 1034 doctors to set up their own practices.
MP wants to present experience report on rare diseases
And then Irlstorfer – even if that explicitly has nothing to do with the Bundestag and nothing to do with party politics – went into the new campaign he had launched “Rare diseases in Bavaria” (we reported): 60 such information events in his constituency are planned, the first ones have already been carried out with great success.
As Irlstorfer announced, at the end there will be a “report” that collects all the findings “in bound form” in writing and then, according to the plan, is to be handed out to all parliamentary groups in the European Parliament, the Bundestag and the state parliaments.
That should happen in 2024, Irlstorfer now wants to collect money for translation, printing and the like.
