Germany: A shortage in doctors force hospitals to declare bankruptcy
Across Germany, nearly 80 hospitals have filed for bankruptcy protection since the beginning of 2022, as some have survived, others haven’t.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg; Therefore, we need emergency aid,” Gerald Gass, president of the German Hospital Association, told the German Rheinische Post newspaper, Wednesday.
He added that 80% of hospitals are financially strapped; Ahead of a two-day conference of German health ministers in Weimar on Wednesday, Gass announced the need for four billion euros in emergency aid to offset rising costs.
The association’s president warned, “The ruling coalition must pave the way for this aid before the summer break. Otherwise, critical healthcare services won’t be available to the population”.
Gass explained that the coalition agreement stipulates support for hospitals, but without specifying a date.
He explained that financial auditors cannot approve it without ensuring business continuity.
He added, “If the banks suspend their loans, bankruptcies will increase… The banks are not satisfied with the ruling coalition agreement as a guarantee.”
New Federal Health Minister Nina Farken is participating in the health ministers’ conference.
Gass hopes the Christian Democratic Union minister will adopt a different approach than her predecessor, Karl Lauterbach of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), saying, “In health ministerial meetings, he sometimes stood up to all his colleagues and preached to them… We now have to find good solutions together… If the minister now implements the coalition agreement plans, she should do so in cooperation with doctors and medical staff, not against them, as happened in previous years”.
In the same context, a survey revealed that the labor gap within the German family doctor network may worsen in the coming years.
The survey, commissioned by the Bertelsmann Foundation and the University of Marburg and covering 3,700 family doctors out of a total of 56,000 in Germany, showed that a quarter of doctors plan to leave their jobs within the next five years, while those who continue to work intend to reduce their weekly working hours by an average of two hours.
According to the Bertelsmann Foundation, there are more than 5,000 vacant positions for family doctors.
Given the inability of young doctors to fill this gap, the shortage of family doctors will double over the next five years, however, the foundation believes this development won’t automatically lead to a decline in healthcare.
The survey participants spend approximately 80% of their working time on consultations and home visits, while family physicians spend the remaining 20% of their working time performing administrative tasks and training.
To ease the burden on clinics, the Bertelsmann Foundation suggested greater reliance on digitalization in scheduling appointments, sharing results, diagnoses, and treatment paths.
However, about a quarter of participants reported that software problems disrupted their work several times a day.
Around 70% of doctors said they saw significant time-saving potential in delegating some tasks to non-medical professionals, such as medical professionals or nursing staff.
