Federal government must stop the insolvency process against hospitals
Berlin/Detmold, 15 March 2023. Dr. Josef Düllings, President of the Association of Hospital Directors in Germany (VKD), and the heads of the Ecclesia Group are concerned about developments in the German hospital sector. “The legally prescribed insolvency proceedings against hospitals must be stopped,” Dr. Düllings demanded during a visit to Detmold.
The Ecclesia Group represents the insurance interests of 70 percent of German hospitals. The Group had invited the managing director of the St. Vincenz Clinics in Paderborn and president of the Association of Private Hospitals in Germany (VKD) to the exchange to discuss the acute plight of the clinics and the various hospital structural reforms at the federal and state level in North Rhine-Westphalia, and to learn, as Ecclesia CEO Jochen Körner put it.
In the exchange, Dr. Josef Düllings made it clear that a hospital reform was not in dispute. However, the clinics are currently much more concerned about the legally prescribed underfunding of inpatient care. The situation of a great many hospitals in Germany is extremely dramatic. The wave of insolvencies long predicted by VKD practitioners is rolling and the planned hospital reform will not change this. “The fear is that many hospitals will not even live to see the reform. This wave of insolvencies is prescribed by law and can therefore only be stopped by the federal government,” says the president of the Association of Hospital Directors in Germany (VKD).
With the legally fixed prices for hospital services, the federal government is denying the clinics the necessary compensation for inflation. In view of the high inflation, this leads to steadily increasing monthly deficits. Hospitals cannot go on strike. They have to maintain the care of seriously ill patients. They do not have the option of private companies to reflect the explosion in costs and energy prices in their prices. They even have to bring money with them. Hospital financing lags far behind the rate of inflation. The result is an immense deficit in revenues, which will add up to at least ten billion euros in 2023 – and as much as 15 billion euros if the expected wage increases are included. “That is why I am talking about a legally prescribed insolvency process against the hospitals, which must be stopped. No reform is possible from this economic imbalance,” Dr. Düllings emphasized during his visit to the Ecclesia Group. ”Around 70 percent of hospitals are already in the red.”
Dr. Peter Gausmann, managing director of GRB Gesellschaft für Risiko-Beratung, a member of the Ecclesia Group, sees this as a risk to patient safety: “We see that many hospitals are on the verge of going out of business. This will have an impact on the quality of care and thus on patient safety, which structural reform can only mitigate with difficulty,” said the managing director of GRB, which explicitly deals with risk prevention in hospitals. “The development of premiums for insurance in the healthcare sector has never been adequately financed by the baskets of goods used and the price adjustment mechanisms. In particular, the obstetric risk, which materializes very rarely but can lead to substantial losses, must be sufficiently taken into account in the calculation,” added Carsten Stracke, who, together with Gunnar Pepping, is responsible for the healthcare sector at Ecclesia.
If you have any questions, please contact:
Thorsten Engelhardt
Spokesman Ecclesia Group
Ecclesiastraße 1 - 4
32758 Detmold
Phone: +49 5231 603-6912
Fax: +49 5231 603-606912
Mobile: +49 151 28800245