Investigation files on the clinic scandal on Lake Constance. Credit: Getty Images / Raimund Koch / Medicine Campus Bodensee / Collage: Dominik Schmitt
On Tuesday, the controllers of the “Medizin Campus Bodensee” (MCB) clinic will meet for a crisis meeting. From 3 p.m. onwards, the Supervisory Board will be concerned with nothing less than the reputation of the entire clinic. The Ravensburg public prosecutor’s office recently searched the hospital’s premises and made serious allegations against the chief physician Jochen Wöhrle and numerous assistant doctors. It’s about alleged negligent homicide in several cases, commercial fraud and failure to provide assistance. The inspectors will discuss the future of the accused doctors on Tuesday.
The clinic scandal has been going on for months – and is probably the climax of a human drama. So what has happened so far?
At the beginning of December, a senior doctor at the clinic who had previously made written allegations against the clinic for alleged abuses and expressed her concern for the well-being of patients took her own life. At the end of December, around 70 employees at the hospital demanded that management fully clarify the allegations. The clinic initiated an internal investigation, and at the beginning of January Wöhrle announced that he would be resigning from his position as medical director for the duration of the investigation. However, he continues to work as chief physician.
The allegations are now also a case for the public prosecutor’s office (file number: 31 Js 3845/24), which showed up at the clinic a few days ago with a search warrant. The clinic, it said in a press release on March 7, cooperated and voluntarily provided the requested documents. The search warrant now shows in detail for the first time what exactly the allegations are against the chief physician and other hospital employees.