Braunschweig/Stuttgart (dpa/lsw) – In the discussion about a major hospital reform, 19 mayors expressed strong existential fears for their clinics. The town hall chiefs of Stuttgart, Heilbronn and Karlsruhe are among the signatories from Baden-Württemberg. “We are deeply concerned about the future viability of our municipally supported and financed maximum care clinics,” they said in a letter to the federal and state health ministers, which is available to the German Press Agency. If fundamentally changed framework conditions are not decided very soon, the existence of the clinics will be at stake.
“Maximum care hospitals are the backbone of inpatient medical care in Germany,” write the city leaders. The chronic underfunding must end so that the houses can continue to make their contribution to regional public services, said Braunschweig’s Mayor Thorsten Kornblum (SPD), in whose city the nationwide appeal was initiated. The reason for this is the hospital financing, which has been critical for years, and the current federal-state talks for reforms.
According to the will of the federal and state governments, the hospital landscape in Germany is to be fundamentally redesigned. In May 2022, a “government commission for hospitals” began its work to address the necessary reforms. The legislative plans should aim to classify the clinic network into three levels of care and to finance them accordingly – from basic care close to home to a second level with other offers up to maximum care providers such as university clinics.
The mayors are demanding significantly better financial resources for their hospitals. These have a largely identical service profile to university clinics, but their existence is secured through the state budgets. The sometimes three-digit million deficits of the maximum suppliers, on the other hand, were at the expense of the often heavily burdened city budgets. In addition, the OBs are also calling for a short-term response to the massive increase in energy costs.
