Dresden (dpa / sn) – Saxony’s Minister of Health Petra Köpping (SPD) wants to give the districts and urban districts better financial support for medical care. As in the negotiations for the Free State’s double budget, she called for a “remunicipalisation fund” for hospitals on Thursday. “We applied for the fund with 100 million euros when the budget was drawn up. This fund was rejected at the time because we did not know what the financial situation in Saxony was like – for example due to Corona,” said the minister of the German Press Agency in Dresden. Now there are likely to be surpluses: “There is money there. We have to set the right priorities now.”
Köpping also justified her claim with the development in the case of the Paracelsus Clinic Reichenbach. The clinic with around 320 employees is insolvent and is scheduled to close on March 31st. Köpping gave an interview to Chemnitz’s “Freie Presse” on Thursday. “In the Reichenbach hospital, it has been known for four years, since the Paracelsus Group went bankrupt at the time, that there were problems. For whatever reason, there was no restructuring. I regret this,” explained the minister. There are other hospitals in the vicinity that would ensure the care of the population and which are also not fully utilized.
In the interview, Köpping referred to a meeting with the Vogtland district administrator, the mayor of Reichenbach, members of the CDU and SPD state parliament from the region and representatives of the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians and AOKplus: “We want outpatient care in Reichenbach to be secured. At the meeting all participants agreed that the Reichenbach hospital unfortunately cannot be maintained in its current form.” A viable concept is now important: “We are working on a good solution and will meet again in four weeks.”
