Hospital.Help

Berlin The hospital reform will fail if the concerns of the states are not addressed. North Rhine-Westphalia’s (NRW) Health Minister Karl-Josef Laumann (CDU) warned of this today.

In particular, Laumann continued, the effects of the planned new financing system must be clear. Buying a pig in a poke is not an option in this matter. In his opinion, this aspect should and will also be of interest to members of the Bundestag.

Although the Hospital Care Improvement Act (KHVVG) does not require approval in the Federal Council, the federal states could block the law by appealing to the Mediation Committee and delay the planned entry into force on January 1, 2025, as was the case last November during the struggle over the Hospital Transparency Act. Several health ministers have already expressed their views in this direction.

Regarding the ongoing implementation of the new NRW hospital planning, Laumann said that it represents a solid foundation for future inpatient care in North Rhine-Westphalia. The focus was on consensus rather than confrontation and a planning system was created together with partners from the health care system in a process lasting several years.

I can definitely recommend that the federal and state governments follow the same path. The North Rhine-Westphalian model can be implemented nationwide on a 1:1 basis and have a far-reaching reform effect. Our planning gives the responsible authorities the necessary freedom and scope for solutions that fit in with an established hospital landscape, and leaves the constitutionally assigned planning sovereignty with the states, emphasized Laumann.

Laumann said that the introduction of performance groups for the first time in Germany would put clear quality requirements and actual needs at the center, while at the same time eliminating duplicate structures. Although the resulting concentration processes were not easy for the hospitals, they were helping to shape the process. Something like this could not be achieved by politicians alone, but only with local expertise and joint development by all the actors involved.

Ingo Morell, President of the North Rhine-Westphalia Hospital Association, agreed. In his view, the NRW hospital planning provides an effective blueprint with little bureaucracy. Although the NRW hospital planning will lead to painful cuts for many hospitals, they are already busy calculating in order to analyze the significant impact on revenues, but it was clear that structural reform would have consequences.

To counter voices that questioned the seriousness of the NRW reform and its effects on the structures, Morell said that a constitutional solution had been found to secure inpatient care in the long term. He also stressed that the practical quality standards in NRW were not something to hide. Concentration and specialization would bring about a noticeable change in the hospital landscape.

The reform of hospital structures at the federal level should follow the model in NRW and concentrate on the essentials: on a sensible bundling of medical expertise through specialization, intelligent forms of cooperation between the hospitals and high-quality care in the area, demanded Matthias Mohrmann, deputy chairman of the board of AOK Rheinland/Hamburg, on behalf of the health insurance companies.

According to Hans-Albert Gehle, President of the Westphalia-Lippe Medical Association, the service groups of the NRW Hospital Plan are characterized by a clear definition that takes into account the medical training regulations, medically sound quality criteria and objective selection criteria. This is still missing from the service groups of the KHVVG. © aha/nfs/aerzteblatt.de