Hospital reform: A new wind blows in the Ministry of Health

It is now a lot different than with Karl Lauterbach as Federal Minister of Health, says Karl-Josef Laumann, State Minister in North Rhine-Westphalia. Compared to earlier advice on hospital reform, this meeting with the new minister Nina Warken was finished than planned, according to her CDU party colleague.

“The second point: you no longer had to bring salt and pepper”, that is also very practical, says Laumann, making some laughs. The SPD man Lauterbach has been doing a salt-free diet for many years.

The atmosphere is relaxed and solved on Thursday afternoon in the Federal Ministry of Health, as a representative of the federal and state governments after their consultations on the future of the clinics, are also a rather unfamiliar picture. Predict Lauterbach drove a hard confrontation course with the federal states in many places. In the conviction that the large clinic reform, its legacy, will only work if the federal states did not bother too much in it.

Finally, the reform is intended to ensure that treatments can be better because only certain houses that meet clear prerequisites are allowed to carry out certain operations. In the end, this should also reduce the high number of clinics. Germany spends a lot of money on its health sector in a European comparison, but only achieves mediocre results. The largest cost block of the health insurance companies flows into the clinics.

The prime ministers and district councilors naturally have an interest in preventing clinic closures. In rural areas in particular, the concerns of the population are great when the closest hospital has to close.

The new Minister of Health Nina Warken is now concerned with the reform of the reform – and wants to take more attention to the concerns of the countries. She wanted Lauterbach’s law, which was decided last autumn, shortly before the traffic light government, “suitable for everyday use”, says the 46-year-old.

One does not want a hospital to be off the grid that was necessary for the care, because certain standards could not be met at the beginning, explains the minister, who was General Secretary of the Baden-Württemberg CDU before her term of office, and thus knows the country perspective well. In the coalition agreement, too, the Union and the SPD agreed to “continue” the hospital reform.

The hospitals should now not only get more money, four billion euros in addition from the special infrastructure assets that the government has set up, the minister also wants to enable the federal states more exceptions to the strict requirements of Lauterbach reform. There is talk of “more freedom of design” in an information paper from the ministry. The reform is “improved”, the minister emphasizes again and again, “but not watered down”.

But this is exactly the concern in the opposition after the federal-state meeting. “Anyone who gives way to structural specifications today says goodbye to every serious hospital reform,” says Janosch Dahmen, the health policy spokesman for the Greens, the star. “If Minister Warken is now in the prospect of exceptions in rows, this is not a consideration of rural areas – but a gift to the clinic lobby.”

Instead of bringing the expenses under control, the government apparently prefers to save on quality, at the expense of the insured and patients, criticizes Dahmen. “Not only for around 500,000 cancer patients, such a policy would potentially fatal,” he adds. “People have to be able to rely on the fact that where hospital is on it, there is also the right hospital in it.”

The health insurance companies also listen to the new tones from the ministry. “Patients must be able to rely on the fact that they will find a really good care with reliable quality measurement standards in every hospital,” says Stefanie Stoff-Ahnis from the top association of statutory health insurance star.

After the summit, however, “the concern is increasing that the regional interests of the individual federal states prevail and the nationwide quality standards fall by the wayside,” said the deputy chairman of the board. “That would be bad for the patients.”

Despite this criticism, Minister Nina Warken is determined to take into account the wishes of the countries “as far as possible”. At the moment your house is working on a draft speaker. The probability is “very, very big,” says the North Rhine-Westphalian CDU man Laumann that a draft will be on the table that can be supported by the countries. The representative of the SPD side, the Hamburg Senator Melanie Schlotzhauer, expresses herself in a similar way.

When asked whether they trust that the process would run in their sense, both answer with a narrow, but all the more clearly: “Yes”. The law should have been decided by the end of the year, it provides for Warken’s schedule.