The future of the Schongau hospital is open, a downgrade or even closure cannot be ruled out.
But emergency care is already at its limit.
Emergency doctors warn of collapse.
District – Jürgen Langhammer (65) is the senior boss of a family business in Schongau.
One night in September 2022 he gets extreme pains in his stomach.
"It was like someone slit my insides open with a razor blade." Chills.
Fever.
"I told my partner: dial 112 or I'll die tonight."
The rescue service is there within a few minutes, as is an ambulance.
Langhammer is admitted to the Schongau emergency room.
And wakes up two days later, wired up, in the intensive care unit in Schongau.
A tear in his stomach almost cost him his life.
"Everything that isn't on my table within half an hour dies," explains the doctor.
Without the emergency room and the surgical team in Schongau, Langhammer would not have survived.
"I wouldn't have been able to make a trip to another hospital.
Without Schongau I wouldn't be here today."
Another emergency patient, who would not have survived without the Schongau emergency room, is like him.
The Schongau family doctor Dr.
Jiri Faltis tells us about an emergency doctor shift that would have turned out differently without an emergency room in Schongau.
"The patient lost a lot of blood." Due to her serious injury, however, she should have been driven to Starnberg.
Faltis drives the patient to the Schongau emergency room, where she is given a blood unit for the journey.
"If we hadn't gotten them in the emergency room in Schongau, the woman would have bled to death on the way." It is clear to him: "Longer distances, greater risk, more deaths." This applies to the care of emergency patients and pregnant women simultaneously.
In detail, this means that there would be a lot of trouble in terms of emergency medical care if the Schongau hospital, including the emergency room, obstetrics and intensive care unit, were to be downgraded or had to close completely.
"We are very concerned," said Faltis, spokesman for the Schongau emergency doctors.
When the hospital doctors are gone, there is no way the general practitioners can catch it."
The fact is: So far, emergency medical care has been provided from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. by doctors who were employed at the Schongau hospital.
During this time, the doctors based in the western district opened their practices to care for patients.
ER shifts?
Excluded.
"When the hospital doctors are gone, there's no way the general practitioners can catch up," said Faltis.
He paints a bleak picture for the western district: "The emergency doctor supply will collapse."
Because there are already problems with emergency medical care and people are missing where the Schongau hospital still exists, there is a risk of collapse.
Two helicopters are increasingly involved in accidents.
Not because of several injuries: one helicopter is supposed to transport the patient, the other flies in an emergency doctor from another area.
That cannot become the norm: "Unfortunately, we don't have that many helicopters," says Faltis.
The few remaining emergency doctors should also have problems with the longer distances that are incurred when traveling to hospitals that are further away.
If the emergency doctor takes the patient to the Schongau emergency room in a Sanka, it takes an hour, maximum one and a half, Faltis calculates.
A trip to another nearby clinic adds about an hour more for the outward and return journey.
Rescue services are already doing significantly more operations than before
“We drive at weekends and at night, we run our practices.
At some point we also have to rest,” Faltis clearly outlines that the emergency doctor job for resident doctors would become even less attractive than it already is.
"That would be a massive burden for us emergency doctors, which is no longer physically affordable."
There is another aspect that has not been considered so far.
We assume case X: The child has a heavily bleeding wound.
With a short trip to the Schongau emergency room, the parents will most likely drive this child themselves, the emergency doctors estimate.
But with a distance of 30, 40 kilometers?
The Schongau Emergency Doctors' Association is certain that the emergency services would probably be consulted more quickly here.
The family doctor, emergency doctor and Schongauer CSU city councilor Dr.
Jiri Faltis makes it clear that the district is not the only one to blame.
The health ministries would have to rethink and “more money would have to be made available for small hospitals”.
Michael Limbrunner is the head of the ambulance and rescue service in the Weilheim-Schongau district association.
He knows that the rescue service is often already at its limit.
"We drive significantly more than before, that's no secret," he explains.
The background is the "human factor", who likes to pick up the phone and dial 112 instead of contacting the medical on-call service.
“That takes too long for many.” This sometimes leads to rescue operations that would not have been necessary at all.
“On-site helpers” are to be expanded
In figures: In 2022 there was an increase in use of ten percent.
Overall, Limbrunner counts almost 31,000 missions.
"We won't get bored." It cannot be denied that the emergency doctors will have to take significantly longer distances if the emergency room in Schongau is closed in the future.
That is why Limbrunner says that the support groups “on-site helpers” are already being expanded.
"We're already working on the next system." Because the number of volunteers is also increasing.
How a closure of the Schongau hospital could specifically affect the rescue service in the district: Limbrunner refers to the association for rescue services and fire brigade alarms in the Oberland (ZRF).
The managing director of the ZRF can be found in the Weilheim-Schongau district office: Helmut Stork heads the association and confirms Limbrunner's statement that the trend in the number of emergency events in the entire Oberland rescue service area - Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen, Weilheim-Schongau - is rising.
"This is a Bavaria-wide trend." Overall, there is a high level of occupancy;
Again and again, help from external rescue services rushed in from the neighboring control center areas.
"By the way, this also happens in the exchange in the "other direction."
The situation in emergency rescue and patient transport in the ZRF Oberland special purpose association is currently being checked by the Institute for Emergency Medicine and Medical Management at the University of Munich (INM) with so-called detailed analyses.
Specifically, the areas of the rescue stations in Oberammergau, in Steingaden and for the parking space for the ambulance (RTW) in Rottenbuch are currently being scrutinized.
"However, we do not yet have the final result of this analysis," says Stork.
In addition, the ZRF Oberland commissioned a detailed analysis of patient transport for the entire area of the RDB Oberland.
Aid deadlines are currently not being met in all cases
The assistance period in the rescue service is regulated as follows in Bavaria: Emergencies in the area covered by a rescue station should generally be able to be reached no later than twelve minutes after an emergency rescue vehicle has been deployed.
This must be met in 80 percent of emergencies.
"The situation in our rescue service area corresponds to this."
But there are exceptions: At the rescue stations in Oberammergau and in Steingaden, the aid deadlines are currently not being consistently observed.
In this area of care, the assistance deadline would be met on average in around 70 to 80 percent of emergencies.
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Are there differences in compliance with the rescue period between the old district of Schongau and the old district of Weilheim?
"The analyzes are not based on district borders, old districts or administrative districts, but on the supply areas of rescue stations." In other words, the Füssen, Kaufbeuren and Landsberg clinics are also included in the consideration of the aid period in the Schongau region - "which also makes sense".
Again and again one hears that there are time windows in which emergency care is not guaranteed.
"In some situations with many parallel operations, especially in a rural region, it was and is always possible that the arrival of the rescue services can take longer," says Stork.
At this point, he also refers to the "helpers on site" and also to the fire brigades, who can then intervene to provide support.
"This system has proven itself very well over the past few years." However, Stork also emphasizes: "First responders and the fire brigade are supporting components."
The figures presented by Stork show that the "on-site helpers" and the fire brigades are playing an increasingly important role in the rescue service: In 2012, a total of 695 such rescue operations were counted in the district; in 2021 there were already 1,205 operations.
In the past year alone, the helpers and the fire brigade were used in at least 1,550 rescue operations.
The numbers have more than doubled within ten years.
Capacities in the rescue service would have to be adjusted if the Schongau hospital were to be closed
The Oberland integrated control center alerts the fire brigade or helpers on site if there is a time advantage for the patient.
"The number of deployments in the regular public rescue service and in patient transport also almost doubled in the period from 2012 to 2022," says Stork.
Furthermore, the locations of the "on-site helpers" and the fire brigades in the Oberland rescue service district have also increased.
"The increasing numbers in the helper and fire service sector have basically nothing to do with a lack of supply in the public emergency rescue service," emphasizes Stork.
If there is no emergency room in the Schongau hospital, the capacities and provisions in the rescue service would then of course have to be adjusted.
"Even today, the Schongau hospital is not approached in the event of a stroke or heart attack, for example, because the stroke unit is in Weilheim," says Stork.
The ZRF Oberland is not responsible for the basic topic of hospital care.
(By the way: everything from the region is now also available in our regular Schongau newsletter.)
When asked whether it will be normal for emergency doctors to be flown in by helicopter from other regions, as is already the case, the district office is vague.
“Whether air rescue equipment is used or not is determined by specific criteria (e.g. emergency doctor available as quickly as possible, diagnosis, transport to a national specialist clinic, etc.).
The responsible integrated control centers, in our case the ILS Oberland, decide on the alarm on a case-by-case basis.”
What effects does it have on the availability of the emergency services in the western district if the Schongau hospital is only available as Level 1i or, in the worst case, no longer available at all?
Here Andreas Hörner from Schongau draws a dramatic picture.
Hörner himself knows what he is talking about: the paramedic was the control center dispatcher at the Oberland integrated control center in Weilheim for 17 years.
Hörner's thesis supports the warning words of the Schongau emergency medical association.
In an emergency, a longer journey by the emergency doctor to a clinic can mean a lot of time for a patient.
In addition: It also takes a long time for the ambulance to get back to the Schongau site.
If the patient is even requested to be transported back – which can happen if the rescue service’s patient transport is at full capacity – it can take hours from the first call out to the return to the Schongau rescue station.
"Let's hope nothing happens right now"
Even before Hörner left the control center in 2017, it was common practice for the ambulance, which is stationed in Steingaden, to be parked on the B 17 near the airfield in the event of a longer absence of the Schongau colleagues, in order to cover a larger area in an emergency to be able to
"Area security" is what it's called in technical chargon.
However, this is then missing again in the southern area, at your own guard.
“As long as there is no patient in the ambulance, there is the opportunity to juggle in the control center.
But once the patient is in the car, you don't unload it and say: Bye, we're going to a traffic accident."
But even in times when there was no talk of closing the emergency room in Schongau, there were often moments “when we put up a candle for the next 20 minutes and said: Let’s hope nothing is happening right now. “Especially for the smaller towns in the western district, it would look bleak in terms of emergency care if the Schongau hospital is closed, Hörner predicts.
Thousands demonstrated on Saturday for the preservation of the Schongau hospital. They received prominent support from cabaret artist Helmut Schleich.
You can find more current news from the region around Schongau at Merkur.de/Schongau.