As of: February 21, 2024, 12:29 p.m
By: Andreas Schmid
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Karl Lauterbach wants to divide German clinics into levels, but the states reject this.
Is the Minister therefore planning a “back door” introduction?
Karl Lauterbach wants to revolutionize the German hospital system.
The centerpiece of his planned hospital reform is a new remuneration system that is intended to free hospitals from the economic pressure to treat more and more patients.
The reform is made up of several sub-laws.
One of these is the Hospital Transparency Act.
The aim is for patients to receive online information about how good which clinic in their area is in which specialist area.
The law must go to the mediation committee on Wednesday.
Laws passed by the Bundestag that do not find a majority in the Bundesrat end up in this committee.
The federal states represented in the Federal Council criticized, among other things, additional bureaucratic burdens and excessive federal intervention in state competencies.
But there is also headwind from the opposition in the Bundestag.
Something unusual comes into play: compared to the
Munich Merkur,
the Left and the CSU are surprisingly in agreement.
Lauterbach's hospital reform: CSU and Left see trick “through the back door”
The Union's responsible rapporteur, Stephan Pilsinger (CSU), criticizes the timing of the law.
It is incomprehensible that transparency should be created before the major reform and not only afterwards.
Pilsinger, himself a practicing doctor, therefore suspects something else behind the law: "With this law, Lauterbach is trying to introduce his originally planned hospital levels through the back door and thus deprive the states of their planning authority as assigned by the Basic Law."
Background: Lauterbach actually wanted to divide German hospitals into a level system depending on quality.
The following categories were planned: Primary care providers, for example for basic surgical procedures and emergencies (Level 1), regional and specialist providers (Level 2), maximum providers such as university hospitals (Level 3) and specialist clinics (Level F).
The states reject this, which is why the level regulation is currently no longer an issue.
“The states don’t have to take this on,” Lauterbach said in the summer – to introduce it anyway?
The left also assumes that Lauterbach is tricking.
The spokesman for hospital and nursing policy for the Left, Ates Gürpinar, tells our editorial team: “The Federal Minister of Health was unable to achieve a division of hospitals into levels in the negotiations with the states.
That's why he invented a law in which hospitals should still be divided into levels." Gürpinar says: "With the transparency law, Health Minister Lauterbach is on a hospital policy ghost ride."
Health politicians in the opposition: Stephan Pilsinger (CSU) and Ates Gürpinar (Left) © Gregor Bauernfeind/Annette Riedl/picture alliance/dpa |
Assembly
Transparency law: resistance from Bavaria
In order to make it difficult for the states to object to this law, the Health Minister, according to Gürpinar, “had liquidity aid for hospitals written into the law.”
In fact, Lauterbach promised financial help for the cash-strapped German clinics.
“We are strengthening the clinics’ liquidity through several regulations,” said the minister.
But: “Although it is often claimed, this is not additional money for the hospitals – which is urgently needed,” says Gürpinar.
“It's 'only' about the faster payment of the care budgets of the last few years, on which hospitals and health insurance companies have not yet been able to reach an agreement.”
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Bavaria's Health Minister Judith Gerlach (CSU) also pointed this out upon request.
“The Transparency Act does not provide any additional funds, but rather it only prefers payments that hospitals are already entitled to.” It is “eyewash when Federal Minister Lauterbach claims that the Transparency Act would solve the problems through additional liquidity.”
The Free State rejects the law in its current form.
Karl Lauterbach during a hospital visit in September 2022: The minister is planning to reform hospitals.
© picture alliance/dpa |
Christophe Gateau//IMAGO/Rainer Weisflog (montage)
Lauterbach defends hospital plan: “only the first of a battery of laws”
Lauterbach himself defends his law.
“With this information, we are giving people, for the first time, a tool to help them choose the right clinic more intelligently and better informed,” said the minister in the Bundestag.
In an interview with the
Münchner Merkur,
the minister added: “If a patient needs a knee endoprosthesis, for example, he can find out who can do it well.”
However, the CSU and the Left point out that it is already possible to compare clinics online.
For example, through information portals such as the DKG German Hospital Directory or the “White List”.
The law is intended to prepare and accompany the planned major reform of hospital remuneration.
“It is clear that this can only be the first of a whole battery of laws,” said SPD politician Lauterbach.
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