Hospital association expects record number of clinic insolvencies in 2024
The head of the association referred to the current hospital barometer of the German Hospital Institute (DKI). According to the annual representative survey of general hospitals, over half of clinics (54%) recorded a negative annual result in 2022. This proportion will rise to over three quarters (78 percent) in the current year, according to the survey available to RND. The proportion of hospitals with a surplus will therefore fall from 35 to just seven percent.
According to the survey, 71% of hospitals expect the situation to deteriorate even further in 2024. Only four percent expect an improvement.
"These are the worst figures since the hospital barometer was introduced in 2000," Gaß told the newspapers. Almost no hospital can still cover its expenditure from current income, warned the head of the association. He again called for hospitals to be compensated for inflation.
Hospitals are not allowed to adjust their prices to inflation on their own responsibility, but have the same increased expenditure as other sectors of the economy, he complained. "This imbalance is increasingly leading to insolvencies and closures," warned Gaß. By the end of the year, hospitals will be short of a total of ten billion euros. More and more hospitals will not be able to cope with this for much longer.
Politicians must act urgently, demanded the head of the association and warned of a failure of the hospital reform planned by Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD).
The results of the Hospital Barometer 2023 are based on a written survey of a representative sample of approved general hospitals with 100 beds or more in Germany, which was conducted from mid-April to the end of June 2023. A total of 388 hospitals took part, as reported by Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland.
Health Minister Lauterbach wrote in the online service X (formerly Twitter): "This wave of insolvencies does not have to come." He pointed out that the Hospital Transparency Act, which is "currently still being blocked by the federal states", provides for six billion euros in additional liquidity for 2024. "But only the major reform will solve the cost explosion in the long term," added Lauterbach.
The Bundesrat recently put the brakes on the Federal Government's plans to set up a public transparency register on hospital quality. The federal states criticized, among other things, additional bureaucratic burdens and excessive federal interference in state competencies. The Hospital Transparency Act is one of several laws with which Lauterbach wants to fundamentally reform the hospital system. At the heart of the planned major reform is a new remuneration system that is intended to free hospitals from the economic pressure to treat more and more patients.
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The association's expectation of a record number of clinic insolvencies in 2024 is based on the current hospital barometer of the German Hospital Institute. With over half of clinics recording a negative annual result in 2022, this proportion is expected to rise to over three quarters in 2023. Gaß, the head of the association, warned that almost no clinic can cover its expenditure from current income and called for hospitals to be compensated for inflation. He cited the imbalance between hospitals not being able to adjust their prices to inflation and having the same increased expenditure as other sectors as a major contributing factor to the expected insolvencies. By the end of the year, hospitals will be short of a total of ten billion euros, and many clinics will struggle to cope with this financial strain. Politicians, including Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, were urged to act urgently to prevent a wave of clinic insolvencies and to implement the planned hospital reform.
Source: www.stern.de
