Health Minister Karl Lauterbach is still struggling to reform the hospital.
(Photo: dpa)
Berlin Actually, there should finally be an agreement on the hospital reform tomorrow, Thursday. At least that’s what Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, who has been negotiating with the federal states about the project for months, is hoping for.
At the upcoming meeting, key points will probably be decided, said the SPD politician last week. However, it doesn’t look like that at the moment. The negotiations ended without result at the beginning of the month.
Now the federal states sent a four-page list of demands to Lauterbach on Wednesday. It is available to the Handelsblatt. The federal states are opposed to Lauterbach’s project on central points.
Among other things, the federal states are calling for a law “to ensure the liquidity of hospitals and to avoid a cold structural change in the years 2024 and 2025.”
This means additional funds for the hospitals to prevent bankruptcies before the plans take effect. Supporters of the reform see this as an attempt by the federal states to protect the clinics from insolvency for as long as possible without having to change the necessary structures.
Countries oppose the transparency of clinic quality
In addition, the federal states are demanding significantly more time to implement the reform. The federal states do not want to start assigning service groups as early as 2024, but only at the end of 2026. Service groups are nationwide quality standards that hospitals will have to meet in the future according to the reform in order to receive money from the statutory health insurance companies.
>> Read more: Lauterbach must weaken clinic reform
They are at the core of the project, as they are intended to ensure that only qualified clinics carry out complicated interventions. The reform would then only have a financial impact in 2028 and not in three years as planned.
In the paper, the states also vehemently reject the transparency project planned by Lauterbach. Basically, it is a map of Germany from which patients can see the quality of treatment for each hospital. This should make it clear to everyone whether the clinic of choice meets the quality criteria specified by the federal government or not.
This publication is “resolutely to be rejected”, write the countries. “Otherwise, facts would be created that could damage the reputation of the hospitals.” In other words, the countries are worried that poor quality clinics will no longer be used, they will lose money and, in the worst case, go bankrupt. In order to implement the project, however, Lauterbach is dependent on the federal states. This does not apply to other parts of the reform, such as the nationwide benefit groups.
NRW reform serves as a model for Lauterbach
“The negotiations are on the right track – but we are not there yet,” a spokesman for the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of Health told the Handelsblatt. The ongoing hospital reform by State Health Minister Karl-Josef Laumann (CDU) is considered a model for Lauterbach’s plans. There are still open points that deal with detailed questions, it said.
It is planned that the key points will be decided and then a draft law will be completed over the summer, which the federal and state governments will have to agree to. “We are confident that the schedule can be met,” said North Rhine-Westphalia. In particular, Bavaria’s Health Minister Klaus Holetschek (CSU) had been extremely critical of the reform in recent weeks.
More: Lauterbach’s meetings with countries remain without agreement