Hospital.Help

Berlin The Federal Association of German Private Clinics (BDPK) has called for cost-covering financing of essential hospitals in Germany in view of the upcoming hospital reform.

The association’s president, Katharina Nebel, emphasized today at the BDPK federal congress in Berlin that the private hospital operators do not question the need for hospital reform. We are immediately in favor of more outpatient care, more quality through specialization and more skilled workers, especially through less bureaucracy, said Nebel.

But we also demand that operating costs be financed in a way that covers costs in times of inflation. She also criticised the fact that the proposed flat-rate provision should continue to be based on the flat-rate fee per case. This will not secure the hospitals that are needed.

With the reform, the federal government wants to free hospitals from the economic pressure of the flat-rate fee system. To do this, it wants to introduce a provision fee that will generally cover 60 percent of a hospital’s operating costs in the future. In addition, all of a hospital’s services will be assigned to previously defined service groups, for which certain quality standards apply.

The managing director of the BDPK, Thomas Bublitz, criticized the fact that the planned provision remuneration is not independent of the services provided by a hospital, as it is supposed to be based on the flat-rate fees. That does not fit together.

New financing system to take effect from 2027

The Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG), Edgar Franke, explained that he did not want to downplay the uncertainties that hospitals are currently having to endure with regard to financing. He pointed out that the federal government had initiated various measures to increase hospital liquidity. These included an increase in the nursing fee value, an increase in the state basic case values ​​and retroactive payment of tariff increases. In total, this would raise several billion euros for hospitals, he said. However, the federal government could not provide any further financial support to hospitals in the current financial situation.

Franke explained that the operating costs of hospitals would be financed through the existing flat-rate fee system up to and including 2026. A transition phase to the new financing system would then begin in 2027, which would then be fully effective from 2029.

Transferring the financial risk to the hospitals

Michael Dieckmann from the BDPK board criticized this. “I am appalled when I hear that no additional money will be paid out until the end of 2026,” he said. “I find it irresponsible that politicians are shifting the entire financial risk of hospital reform onto the providers: especially onto the private and non-profit providers who cannot receive money from the municipalities. This would destroy values ​​that have been built up over generations.

Franke made it clear that the finer points of hospital reform would still be negotiated in the upcoming negotiations between the federal and state governments on the contents of a legal ordinance, in which the intended service groups would also be fine-tuned. We need even greater precision here, he said. © fos/aerzteblatt.de