BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) expects that patients will gradually have to deal with a much more specialized hospital landscape in Germany from autumn 2024. There will then be a "strong dynamic", Lauterbach said in Berlin on Thursday. Lauterbach was speaking at the start of a series of talks on the planned reform with local authority associations, self-administration and the federal states. The minister expressed confidence that the timetable for the hospital reform could be maintained.

From May: click to clinic

From May, insured persons will be able to use the new online clinic atlas to research which procedure is carried out in which clinic in their region and how often. The next step will be to provide information on complication rates, according to Lauterbach. In March, the Federal Council passed the corresponding law to establish a state online atlas. As an interactive portal, the new "transparency directory" is intended to provide easy-to-understand information on the services offered by the 1,700 or so clinics in Germany.

In April: Clinic reform on the home straight

Lauterbach said that the actual hospital reform should be passed by the Federal Cabinet on April 24th. The detailed coordination currently underway within the government is still dealing with detailed legal issues, for example. Another federal-state meeting on the reform is planned for April 17. Some of the federal states had insisted on more money for their hospitals. The ranks of the health insurance funds had also recently expressed strong reservations about the financial aspects of the reform.

However, Lauterbach does not currently see the need for more fresh money for hospitals in order to avert disorderly hospital closures. "We won't see a dramatic collapse of hospitals." Last year, there were 33 insolvency proceedings. 7 out of 1720 clinics had to close. The bottom line is that there are still far too many hospitals. They lack staff and money. But they are also not necessary. Billions in aid for hospitals, for example through the recent Transparency Act and the early refinancing of wage increases, prevented a disorderly demise of hospitals. Instead, there will be an urgently needed orderly restructuring and dismantling.

From fall 2024: more hospital transparency

According to Lauterbach, the federal states will receive a new instrument for hospital planning this year, namely for impact assessment. For example, the consequences of individual services being cut at certain hospitals will be assessed. To this end, Germany has been divided into 84,000 cells per 1,000 inhabitants. This could be used to check how many hospitals in a region offer spinal surgery, where this is necessary to ensure the provision of care and where the loss of this service could be compensated for within a reasonable distance.

Lauterbach's expectations are high: with the new information on the entire spectrum of hospital services - sorted by so-called service groups - there will be "huge transparency" from the fall. Until now, the hospital system in Germany has been flying blind - for around 90 billion euros in treatment costs per year. Now, for the first time, there will be planning based on solid data. States, local authorities and providers could see where investment or cooperation was worthwhile or where services should be dispensed with. "We will see a drastic restructuring."

The aim behind this is "structural improvements, said Lauterbach. "Half of the hospitals in Germany have fewer than 150 beds." Top-class medicine could only be provided here for minor surgical procedures, internal medicine, obstetrics or emergency care, for example - but not for complicated cancer medicine. According to the plans, there will be much more concentration for complex, plannable interventions./bw/DP/ngu