Erfurt (dpa/th) – According to the state hospital association, the economically difficult situation of the hospitals in Thuringia will continue to worsen in the coming months. Although some of the clinics were “still reasonably able to get by this year” due to longer-term contracts, said the chairwoman of the Thuringia state hospital association, Gundula Werner, on Thursday at a forum event according to the speech manuscript. “By next year at the latest, however, all hospitals are likely to have serious economic difficulties.”
This foreseeable development does not exclusively have to do with the recent massive increase in energy costs, which, according to Werner, only acted as a catalyst for price developments of other costs.
The representatives of the Thuringian hospitals have been warning for months that they are threatened with huge budget deficits if the state does not support them with additional money. The reasons given were not just higher heating costs, but also, for example, increased food prices. In large parts of the clinics, it is not easily possible to simply turn down the heating, for example.
Werner was also dissatisfied with an aid program for hospitals promised by the federal government, which is intended to bring the clinics six billion euros in support to cushion cost increases associated with higher energy prices. In their opinion, this sum is clearly too low.
Thuringia’s Health Minister Heike Werner (left) said in a video message at the hospital forum that on the one hand it was good that the federal government had now announced an aid program for the clinics. Unlike many other companies, hospitals cannot simply pass on the price increases. On the other hand, she wants to urge the federal government to speed up the payment of the aid funds.
