Hospitals are on the brink (nd-aktuell.de)

Nurse Marie Sohn (left) with her colleague Izaak Falk on the way to the Federal Ministry of Health.

Nurse Marie Sohn (left) with her colleague Izaak Falk on the way to the Federal Ministry of Health.

Nurse Marie Sohn (left) with her colleague Izaak Falk on the way to the Federal Ministry of Health.

Photo: Florian Boillot

“The patient in bed will specifically notice the poorer quality of care,” says Marie Sohn on Thursday to “nd”. The 34-year-old is the head of nursing at the Alexianer St. Hedwig Kliniken and is standing in her work clothes in the weak autumn sun in the courtyard of the hospital on Grosse Hamburger Strasse in Mitte. No, she wouldn’t freeze and she’s right there when she, along with the 200 or so other clinic employees who have gathered, will move to the Federal Ministry of Health and follow the Berlin Hospital Society’s (BKG) call to protest, explains Sohn.

In the 13 years that she has been working here in the hospital, the situation has never been so dramatic, says the nurse. Many patients are doing very poorly. “We no longer have the so-called surgical patient who comes for an operation, but the person then has pneumonia and malnutrition at the same time,” says Sohn. The young woman is certain that it is clearly an effect of the corona pandemic that people are getting sicker and needing even more care.

This is all the more dramatic because the clinics throughout Germany have not yet received a single concrete indication of how they should cope with the price increases. Energy has become significantly more expensive, and as a result so have numerous services such as laundry and medical goods.

A situation that threatens the very existence of the clinics – as it does for many others, says Grit Ismer, CEO of the BKG. “But we can’t just pass the increases on to the patients” – and that’s a good thing.

The legally possible price increase rate for the current year, which was negotiated with the health insurance companies at the end of last year and cannot be renegotiated, is capped at 2.32 percent. However, inflation in Berlin and Brandenburg was now just under ten percent in September.

In all service and supply areas, but especially in the energy supply, clinics will have to accept a multiple of cost increases this year, but at the latest in the next, according to the BKG. At the time of the negotiations, Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, with its consequences for energy and costs, was not foreseeable. Like the hospitals in Brandenburg, which have also been taking part in the nationwide protests under the motto “Red Alert!” for weeks, the Berlin hospitals also fear deficits that could threaten their existence. The public Berlin hospitals still need 100 million euros in 2022, for 2023 this sum will rise to up to 300 million euros, explains Ismer.

“If Federal Minister of Health Lauterbach does not act, the hospitals are threatened with supply and delivery bottlenecks, economic difficulties, long waiting times and even more overcrowded emergency rooms,” warns Marc Schreiner, BKG Managing Director. “Without immediate financial support from the federal government, which will not only lead you through this crisis once, but also in the long term, the hospitals are simply forced to restrict their offer, block beds, close wards.” The way the clinics are treated is disappointing, especially after what clinic employees would have done in the pandemic years.

Later, Ulrike Gote (Greens) also took the microphone at the press conference. The health senator has shown solidarity with the BKG protests from the start. “We stand on the same playing field and fight for the same things,” says Gote, receiving applause for it. The action comes at the right time – but it should not have come later.

But what happens if the federal government lets the clinics down? “If the houses have to save, then that’s only possible in stationary stores,” thinks Marie Sohn. That means: cut back on staff – a bizarre development in view of the prevailing staff shortage and ongoing job exodus, which people in Berlin are desperately trying to fight against – and a life-threatening one for patients.

Peter Neu, specialist in psychiatry at the Jewish Hospital, sees the plight of the nursing staff. You will definitely not save on employees in your company. “We have a kind of post-corona exhaustion and a pronounced wave of illness among the employees,” says Neu to “nd”. The situation has never been as bad as it is now.

Neu’s colleague Robert Pfitzmann, a specialist in abdominal surgery, sees politics alone as responsible. “No decisions are deliberately made, you leave it to the economic pace – whoever goes under, goes under,” criticizes the doctor. “After the corona crisis, we’re going to the next catastrophe.” In his eyes, the problem also lies in unresolved conflicts about clinics that are not financially viable but are not going offline, also because this would massively increase care in rural areas, for example deteriorate.


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