Hospital.Help

Berlin The umbrella association of specialist doctors in Germany (Spifa) is once again pushing for a fundamental reform of emergency care in Germany. This also includes closing emergency rooms without integrated emergency centers (INZ) with shared counters.

It is important that doctors independent of the hospital should decide how patients who visit the emergency rooms of a hospital will be cared for.

Effective patient management also includes consistently eliminating the paths that hospital authorities sometimes use to fill their beds. Emergency departments that are not part of an INZ will therefore no longer be allowed to exist in the future. They have to be closed, said Spifa CEO Dirk Heinrich.

Otherwise, there is a risk of a decision based on bed occupancy and therefore economically oriented for the hospital by the initial assessment body, which is under the hospital’s service, the association said.

Spifa calls for the INZ’s common counters to be located at the statutory health insurance associations (Kven). It is also important to de-budget acute and emergency care and to fully finance the health insurance companies’ standby structures.

In 2013, the revenue volume for sensitive outpatient hospital cases without admission to inpatient care was 4.8 billion euros, said SpiFa managing director Andr Byrla.

These are cases that, by definition, are 100 percent avoidable. If you ask experts, you will get an estimate that this revenue volume is now at least ten billion euros per year. © hil/aerzteblatt.de