BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach has defended the planned online atlas on services and treatment quality of hospitals in Germany against criticism. This transparency is long overdue, the SPD politician said during the first discussion of a bill in the Bundestag on Thursday. Until now, he said, people have been left alone when it comes to the existential question of where they should go for cancer treatment, for example. "It can't stay that way."

Creating this transparency only later would be a cynical consideration, Lauterbach said. "Should the hospitals that have the quality deficits perhaps fill up with our children, parents or even ourselves?" In addition, he said, it will become visible in the future if small hospitals did what they offer, sometimes very well.

According to the coalition's plans, the "transparency directory" is to be launched in April 2024 and, as an interactive portal, will provide comprehensible information about the respective services offered at 1,700 clinic locations nationwide. Specifically, it should be possible to see which hospital offers which services. Data on case numbers, i.e. treatment experience, the staffing ratio for specialists and nursing staff, and complication rates for selected procedures will also be available. Hospitals will have to report additional data for the directory, including data on nursing staff and physicians.

Criticism came from the opposition. Thomas Dietz, an AfD member of parliament, warned of "yet another bureaucratic monster" and referred to existing quality reports. Union health expert Tino Sorge (CDU) demanded a rapid "bridge financing" before the planned hospital reform, so that no houses in the area were lost, which would still be needed. Ates Gürpinar (Left Party) underscored the demand that hospital deficits be made up now.

Following renewed calls from the hospital sector for additional financial injections due to high inflation, Lauterbach reiterated that the federal government had always met its obligations. In contrast, he said, the states had indisputably failed to pay 30 billion euros in investment costs over the past ten years. "If the states now want to take to the streets and hold the federal government responsible, then that borders on hypocrisy in my view." The planned hospital reform envisages changing the remuneration system with flat rates for treatment cases in order to relieve clinics of financial pressure to treat more and more cases./sam/DP/mis