Hospital.Help

Berlin – The parliamentary state secretary in the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG), Edgar Franke (SPD), wants to “take another look at the planned de-budgeting of general practitioners” and evaluate it “carefully”.

In his remarks at the spring festival of the Association of Substitute Insurance Funds (vdek) last night, he said that one must particularly look at the oversupplied regions and analyze the effects there; this also applies to the planned annual flat rates.

The plan is to implement the much-announced de-budgeting in the Health Care Strengthening Act (GVSG), which is expected to be passed by the cabinet in the next few weeks. In the reform process, Franke acknowledged the importance of the Hospital Care Improvement Act (KHVVG).

“Karl Lauterbach was able to achieve success here today with the cabinet decision,” said Franke, who stood in for the minister’s planned greeting. He understands the anger of those involved in the healthcare system about some of the regulations in the law as well as the criticism of financing through a transformation fund.

“We spend over 100 billion euros on hospital care every year and the quality is only average compared to Europe,” says Franke. This must change. “I have visited 70 hospitals in the name of the Lord over the past year and a half, which was not always subject to entertainment tax,” Franke continued.

The Transparency Atlas, which is to be presented at the end of the week, is therefore an important step towards greater quality transparency for insured persons. The financial structure of the transformation fund was chosen in this way in the KHVVG because the budgetary situation does not allow any other option. “We’ll see what the budget looks like in 2026,” Franke continued. In general, the clinic reform was delayed for too long by the previous governments.

Cost-covering financing of the medical costs of citizens’ benefit recipients was also delayed. Here – as provided for in the coalition agreement – ​​financing from tax revenue was planned. “If we had these eleven billion more, we could do some things better,” said Franke. Here too, he hopes for a better budget situation in the coming years.

He shares this hope with this year’s chairwoman of the Conference of Health Ministers (GMK), the Justice and Health Minister of Schleswig-Holstein, Kerstin von der Decken. According to her indications, the ministers will also deal with the issue of better financing of non-insurance benefits in mid-June, she said at the spring festival of the health insurance association. Another topic at this year’s GMK conference will be the insurance exemption of so-called pool doctors in outpatient emergency services. Numerous countries are striving for a change here, von der Decken announced.

Nevertheless, “this year too,” hospital reform will dominate the GMK conference, she said. “We actually wanted to have this completed by the end of 2023, but unfortunately the federal government left the common path to reform and didn’t even take it with other actors,” said von der Decken. As GMK chairwoman, she now wants to lead the KHVVG to success. “Because we need the law, we as countries agree on that,” emphasized von der Decken.

Von der Decken gave enough vent to her anger about the Federal Ministry of Health’s behavior towards the states: “We states received the draft, which was already circulating in the media, on April 17th. By April 30th we have written a unified statement with constructive criticism and suggestions for changes. This shows that we are concerned with the issue, not party politics.” The states expected that “our clear demands would be incorporated.” The federal government should “take this seriously,” said the minister.

As a lawyer, she predicted that there would be lawsuits against the KHVVG and that it would even end up before the Federal Constitutional Court. Her state colleague Judith Gerlach (CSU) from Bavaria also emphasized again in interviews that she wanted to take legal action against the law.

In the course of the hospital reform, there must also be an emergency and rescue service reform, demanded Ulrike Elsner, chairwoman of the vdek. The rescue service belongs in Book V of the Social Security Code in order to structure financing better.

The chairman of the vdek, Uwe Klemens, was also critical of the current health policy. “Politicians want to determine more and more details and ignore the fact that we have a self-governing health system. Politics sets the framework and self-administration makes the details,” says Klemens. “Politicians forget that the laws are how our money is spent, the contributions of the insured and those of the employers,” says Klemens. © bee/aerzteblatt.de