Asklepios Kliniken GmbH & Co. KGaA
Hamburg (ots)
- DKG boss Dr. Gaß was a guest in Asklepios CEO Kai Hankeln’s health policy podcast
- Clinic experts criticize planned hospital reform
In his health policy podcast “Inside Health“, Kai Hankeln, CEO of Asklepios Kliniken, now had Dr. Gerald Gass as a guest, the chairman of the board of the German Hospital Society (DKG). The main topic was the hospital reform planned by Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach. Although the member companies of the DKG are to implement the reform later, the association was not represented at all in the expert commission. Only after the reform proposals became known was the DKG able to deal with them and have the possible consequences for German hospitals analyzed. They are serious because the hospitals are already in a very bad economic position due to years of underfunding and the current high inflation.
The hospital company’s impact analysis revealed – broken down for the individual federal states – which level the clinics are assigned to according to the reform proposal and which services they are still allowed to offer. “A hospital reform that, after a certain convergence phase, means that we have mergers, that we see hospital conversions, and hospital closures, will ultimately mean that we no longer have 1,700 locations, but fewer,” says Dr. Gerald Gass in the podcast. The board of the DKG fears that particularly small clinics that do not belong to any association or group will get into difficulties. For Hankeln there is no reason to be happy: “It’s not that we’re happy when competitors stumble. On the contrary. I’m a great friend of carrier diversity, which we also need in this country and which the system at the position also makes strong.”
One topic is particularly worrying for the interlocutors: the financial situation of German clinics. “The situation is more than dramatic. I’ll bring you a number: Every month, German hospitals are currently making 740 million euros miserable. Every month. At the end of March we are almost nine billion euros from January 22 – calculated cumulatively. The hospitals are in the intensive care unit – and nobody takes care of immediate life-saving measures,” says Dr. gas. Asklepios board member Kai Hankeln complains: “Nobody wants to give the investment funds, the federal states would be responsible but don’t have it, the federal government doesn’t take it over and the statutory health insurance companies themselves are stuck.” If in doubt, the care contribution or the KV contribution would rather be increased – and that puts a strain on international competitiveness, Hankeln fears.
Gass and Hankeln consider the minister’s idea that his reform would solve the shortage of skilled workers to be naïve. “The reform will not solve the problem of skilled workers. That’s also a narrative: we simply distribute the employees who are there to fewer houses – and then everyone is happy. That there are more cases in the few houses and the workload does not become any smaller as a result – that is ignored,” says Hankeln.
It is also important for the DKG to make it clear that it is not just about criticism, but that solutions are also proposed. Gass and Hankel see good approaches when it comes to outpatient treatment, digitization and prevention. “We still treat too many cases on an inpatient basis. We have to adapt to more outpatient, clinical outpatient care in hospitals based on international models. We need the framework for that,” says Dr. gas. He also advocates “a very consistent digitization strategy in order to be able to cope with the demographic challenge.” And prevention is also important to the interlocutors. Especially on the basis of data use in the context of digitization, it can specifically benefit patients, help avoid diseases or reduce the consequences of diseases.
You can find the podcast on all platforms such as Podigee or Apple and here: https://www.asklepios.com/konzern/unternehmen/aktuell/inside-health-gesundheitspodcast/
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Original content from: Asklepios Kliniken GmbH & Co. KGaA, transmitted by news aktuell