The president of the German Hospital Federation, Gerald Gaß, is sounding the alarm over the precarious financial situation that a majority of hospitals are now facing, caused by high expenses for intensive care for pandemic patients, and losses because many other treatments have been postponed or cancelled to free up capacity for pandemic treatment. This has substantially reduced the regular income which hospitals get from health insurance companies for standard treatments, Gaß said.
The situation is so dramatic that during the first quarter of 2021, fully 25% of clinics will not be able to pay their medical staff full salaries, Gaß warned, calling for instant state intervention to stabilize the situation. The German Hospital Institute (DKI) has additionally warned of the consequences which the downward dynamic of the financial situation will have, with about two- thirds of hospitals reporting grave budget problems which would inevitably threaten hospitals with insolvency.
That said, however, Gaß and the DKI are well aware that the financial stress which hospitals are under dates back to the privatization of the past two decades which has transformed healthcare delivery into a profit-oriented operation with dramatically reduced full-time hospital staff. Select state interventions alone, as called for by Gaß and the DKI, will not improve the situation. What has to be done, is the re-transformation of the medical sector into a public good.
