“The flood of hip and knee joint operations must end”

Berlin Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) has defended his plans for hospital reform before the upcoming meeting with his departmental colleagues from the federal states.

“Reform is not about closures. You don’t need any reform for that, the wave of closures has already started anyway,” said Lauterbach in an interview with the Handelsblatt. In the opinion of the SPD politician, without reform, a large number of hospitals would be on the brink of collapse.

Lauterbach expects that the reform will mean that only medically necessary operations will be carried out in the future. “The flood of hip and knee operations must end,” he said. As a reason for the many interventions, he stated that the smaller houses were forced to make ends meet with such operations. “For many hospitals, these are cash cow interventions with a positive contribution margin.”