Doctors are calling for basic hospital reform

The cost pressure in hospitals is increasing, and patients receive certain therapies, often for purely economic reasons. Against this “dictates of the Economy in our hospitals,” prop 215 Doctors in the current issue of the magazine “Stern”. Together with 30 organizations, the physicians are appealing to the Federal government: “The state must create the conditions to ensure that the human right to health care.” The management of a hospital belong in the hands of “people that the Patients consider as most important goal”.

The background of the call, the concern of many Doctors, the patients, in spite of high-performance medicine is not good provide and also for your security guarantee. That the emergency rooms are overcrowded, and Doctors resort to often to the scalpel, has been known.

The Problem remains, however: In many hospitals, Economists not only the company, you are the parent of as commercial Directors the medical Directors. Thus, the Profit stand is often a sensible, good and sustainable patient care. (Read here about Asklepios hospitals: “The sick group”).

How money influenced the therapy decision

Many Doctors make, according to the report, another Problem is responsible for the maladministration: the already 16 years ago, introduced lump-sum payments. This system of compensation provides that hospitals be paid for services rendered. The more services, the more money. It is also measured in addition to the quantity, the quality and the investigations and therapies differently rewarded. This in turn influences therapy decision.

The Internist Arndt Dohmen describes the disincentives to work in the “star” in the example of a diabetic, the due to open wounds on the soles of the feet, Amputation is imminent. “In the case of a flat rate system, the complex conservative treatment, and are hard to settle, there are about 3,000 euros,” said Dohmen. “Just cut off, dramatically speaking, with more than 10,000 euros, considerably more lucrative.”

These abuses do not want to accept the doctors longer. Your Claims:

  • The case had a flat rate system, or reformed, replaced
  • The economically-driven Übertherapie and care of patients should be stopped
  • The state had to ill planning houses better and equip

The appeal of Doctors is the latest in a string of initiatives and surveys that deal with the Problem of the cost pressure in the German clinics. So, the German ethics Council had already criticized in 2016, that the Patient was saved. Also, the physician Karl-Heinz Wehkamp stated in 2017, after the publication of the results of a physicians ‘ survey: “A risk to the patient is taken into account.” And a young Doctor reported to 2018 in the MIRROR, why she wondered after a year of work in a clinic disillusioned: “What kind of Doctor I am just?”