As of: February 22, 2024, 9:18 a.m
By: Josef Hornsteiner
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Incendiary letter to the Minister of Health: (from left) Frank Niederbühl (Klinikum), Sebastian Kramer (Zugspitz Region), Anton Speer (District Administrator GAP), Andrea Jochner-Weiß (District Administrator WM/SOG), Hannes Sörgel (Health Manager GAP), Hansjörg Zahler ( Chairman of the Health Region) and Benedikt Wiedemann (Health Manager WM/SOG).
© PHOTOPRESS THOMAS SEHR
The financial distress of hospitals is prompting health regions to issue an open fire letter.
They locate the problems in current federal health policy.
Garmisch-Partenkirchen – When a red alert is declared, those in distress tend to exaggerate.
Not in the case of the cash-strapped clinics in the districts of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Weilheim-Schongau and Landsberg am Lech.
The situation is actually serious.
Last year alone, the clinic in the district ran into a deficit of twelve million euros due to inflation and increased energy and material costs.
“This crisis costs every single citizen in the district between 160 and 180 euros a year,” says Hansjörg Zahler, making the dilemma clear.
The chairman of the district's health region no longer feels like laughing.
“What's happening here is crazy.” That's why he and his health region colleagues from the Weilheim-Schongau and Landsberg am Lech districts wrote a three-page open letter - which was dropped into the mailbox yesterday.
The addressee: The Ministry of Health under Karl Lauterbach (SPD) and the Bundestag members of the government coalition.
Aim of the pithy letter: “We have to put pressure on the Ministry of Health,” says District Administrator Anton Speer (Free Voters), who presented the open letter to the press together with his colleague from Weilheim/Schongau, Andrea Jochner-Weiß (CSU).
With the harsh letter they want to point out the “fatal undesirable development in current health policy”.
More and more hospitals are recording huge losses and even bankruptcy.
“We are heading towards financial bottlenecks that could develop into a situation that threatens the existence of clinics if we do not take action immediately,” says Zahler.
Around 352,000 citizens are affected.
He sees regional and national health care at risk.
We spend 30.4 billion euros on development aid around the world.
Now the health of our own population should be the top priority.
Hansjörg Zahler, chairman of the district's health region
The recipient of the criticism: Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD).
© Felix Müschen
The main problem: The clinics themselves are doing well to excellently.
“It's not their fault.” Rather, it's the ever-widening gap between expenses and income.
The deficit comes about because the increased operating costs and the tariff increases are having a huge impact on the office, but the hospitals are paid according to legally set rates and cannot simply increase prices like commercial companies.
This is regulated by the state base case value and thus by the Federal Ministry.
“In 2022 we had an operating cost increase of six percent.
However, the price increase was only two percent,” explains hospital managing director Frank Niederbühl.
Last year it was the same thing: a cost increase of seven percent, but the price was only allowed to rise by four percent.
This is how the huge deficit comes about.
The downward economic spiral of the clinics is being ignored at the federal level
“It is incomprehensible that the Federal Minister of Health continues to ignore the economic downward spiral of the clinics and stands idly by as the cold structural change continues to accelerate,” Zahler sharply criticizes Lauterbach.
In the worst case, medical departments or entire clinic locations could fall victim to this underfunding.
The ministerial approach has a distaste for everyone involved.
“It creates the impression that any kind of structural change in the clinic landscape is to be achieved coldly.” So many of the 1,900 clinic locations in Germany are in danger of closing.
This would mean that rural areas in particular would be deprived of health care.
“We spend 30.4 billion euros on development aid around the world.
Now the health of our own population should be the top priority,” says Zahler.