Hamburg – “The controversy that has flared up at the moment as to whether shareholders in medical care centers can also be corporations or only doctors is far from reflecting social reality,” notes Prof. Heinz Lohmann. The healthcare entrepreneur and President of the HEALTH ECONOMY CONGRESS considers the assumptions implied in this debate that doctors almost naturally always act in the interests of the patients, while other investors are greedy contemporaries who need to be energetically stopped, to be absurd.
Viewed soberly, our society is in the midst of a fundamental change that does not stop at the players in the healthcare industry. The number of doctors in private practice is declining sharply almost everywhere. The trend is exactly the opposite for all employed doctors, both in practices and in MVZs. The reason for this is certainly that for the first time in the course of the last year more women than men were employed in outpatient medical care. As in any other industry, employees need successful companies in which they can work in a future-proof job. Outpatient medical companies in the healthcare sector are already facing major challenges today and will certainly do so in the future. Many of these involve significant investments. Digital technology and modern diagnostic and therapeutic methods require the risk-taking use of capital. It is therefore irresponsible to discourage private investment with ideological reservations.
“Rather, it is correct to actually make the patient’s interests the yardstick for approval for medical service provision,” says Lohmann. Ideology must finally be replaced by empiricism. Acting with insinuations and suspicions is not effective. It must be about demanding quality in outpatient care from everyone involved and monitoring compliance. That is why maximum transparency is urgently required. There are more and more patients who want to find out more. They would have to be able to make comparisons, completely independently of the shareholder structure of an outpatient service. In addition, the state has to check again and again whether performance-related remuneration creates false incentives for donors. Lohmann emphatically: “The health system, which is largely financed on the basis of solidarity, has nothing to give away, but it has to do a lot.”
The topic of private shareholders in medical companies is at the top of the agenda of the HEALTH ECONOMY CONGRESS 2023 on September 19th and 20th in Hamburg.
Current information on the HEALTH MANAGEMENT CONGRESS 2023 on September 19th and 20th in Hamburg and direct registration – currently at an early bird rate – can be found at any time at: www.gesundheitswirtschaftskongress.de