Corona also has pleasant long-term consequences: The Erding Clinic will buy the computer tomograph (CT), which the Free State of Bavaria provided in June 2020 for the treatment of Covid sufferers, at a bargain price.
Erding - The CT will then be installed in the emergency room, which will be converted in this context. The whole thing is expected to cost around half a million euros, but the Free State only wants a transfer fee of 80,000 euros for the CT. It cost over 300,000 euros. The clinic now sees an opportunity to optimize emergency care and internal processes.
CT scans were needed during the pandemic to be able to visualize the lung disease. For reasons of infection protection, the CT was not set up in the hospital at the time, but in a container at the hospital. The disadvantage: Patients who are lying down cannot be pushed into the tube and the patients can get to the container through the open air.
In the hospital committee, clinic director Dr. Last: “The Free State is offering us to take over the device, otherwise it will be picked up in June.” You won’t be able to get a comparable high-tech device for 80,000 euros so quickly. But that wasn't the only reason Last recommended buying it. He wants to set a chain reaction in motion, especially since no one knows when the clinic reform from Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) will come and what consequences it will have.
Last plans to set up the CT in the emergency room. “Such a device should actually be standard there,” said the director, “so that we can care for acute patients as quickly and comprehensively as possible.” In addition, more and more people are visiting the emergency room, most recently 25,000 a year.
The hospital's in-house CT is located one floor below the emergency room. Last and Dr. explained what consequences this has in everyday life. Dirk Lieber, medical director of the emergency room. On the one hand, emergencies disrupted the regular CT process. Lieber reported that it was very time- and personnel-intensive to drive a patient across the house from the outpatient clinic to the CT room. “This ties up nursing staff and sometimes also doctors.” Short distances could be life-saving, especially in the case of skull injuries and strokes. And in modern medicine, CT is being used more and more frequently in diagnostics, also as an alternative to X-rays. “The staff to operate two CTs is available,” assured Lieber.
The doctors Thomas Bauer, Emil Rudolf (both CSU) and Lena Geiger (Greens) who were represented on the committee also strongly recommended buying.
However, as is well known, the emergency room is already too small today. “The CT will bind up space again,” admitted Last. “Our idea is to cut three treatment rooms in half. Then they will be smaller, but we will have more capacity available.” Last but not least, this would make it easier to accommodate isolation patients.
Overall, Last emphasized, in this way one could gain breathing space until the planned new construction of a large, modern emergency room. As is well known, this will be built at the southern end of the functional building. As reported, the Free State has promised more than 30 million euros in funding. “But the measure will of course cost a lot more money,” said Last, who is of course aware of the tense financial situation of the hospital and the district. It is completely uncertain when the project can start. The new CT is therefore a very good interim solution.
According to Last, the half million euros required for this cannot be viewed in isolation. With the CT takeover you save a one-off amount of 220,000 euros. In addition, over 70,000 euros in operating costs could be saved per year.ham