Enlarge image
Ambulance in front of an emergency room in Schleswig-Holstein (symbol picture)
Photo: Frank Molter / picture alliance / dpa
The number of hospital infections in Germany has risen in the corona pandemic.
As the Barmer-Krankenkasse hospital report published on Wednesday shows, there have been around 34,000 additional infected people across Germany from the beginning of the pandemic to the end of last year and up to 1,300 further deaths due to a so-called nosocomial infection.
This is understood to mean an infection that occurred in connection with medical treatment, for example in hospitals, care facilities or outpatient practices.
Examples are wound infections after surgery, infections from catheters or urinary tract infections.
According to the Barmer Report, up to 600,000 patients in German hospitals contract nosocomial infections every year.
Up to 15,000 people die from it.
Heavy workload for clinic staff
The report also attributes the fact that there were more cases in the pandemic to a changed patient structure and the increased workload in hospitals.
"Especially during the first wave, older people in particular, who are significantly more susceptible to infections, were on the wards," said Barmer CEO Christoph Straub.
Added to this is the high workload for the clinic staff, who sometimes lacked protective equipment, especially in the first wave.
Straub emphasized that this was not a criticism of the nursing staff or the doctors.
You would have achieved an enormous amount in the corona pandemic.
However, the hospital staff was apparently so stressed in the pandemic that they were not always able to fully comply with the high hygiene standards required.
Straub called for a master plan for more hygiene.
There are hygiene specialists in the hospitals.
Their acceptance and work would have to be strengthened in everyday work, "so that in exceptional situations such as a pandemic, higher hygiene requirements do not lead to stressful situations."
Heavy slump in hospital cases
The report also quantifies a sharp drop in the number of hospital cases overall: In 2020, due to the corona pandemic, there were only 186 hospital cases per 1,000 insured years, almost 14 percent fewer than in the previous year.
Of these, 174 hospital cases are in the field of somatic medicine, the rest are mental illnesses, the report says.
In terms of hospital days, Barmer also recorded a sharp decline from around 1,600 to 1,386 hospital days per 1,000 insured years.
The decline in somatic illnesses was therefore more pronounced at 14.7 percent compared to the previous year than in mental illnesses with a decrease of 10.8 percent.
Regional differences
The length of stay of patients in hospitals has also decreased slightly overall.
On average, they spent 7.4 days in hospital, from 2016 to 2019 the duration was constant at 7.5 days.
Barmer differentiates between somatically and mentally ill patients: For somatically ill patients, the length of stay decreased from 7.5 days in 2006 to 6.1 days in 2020.
In contrast, the length of stay for mental illnesses increased from 2006 to 2020 from 22.2 to 25.1 days.
The values differed significantly from region to region.
According to the report, Saarland and Thuringia have the highest number of cases, Baden-Württemberg the lowest.
kry / AFP