Munich/Berlin (dpa/lby) - According to the district council, Bavarian hospitals are threatened with bankruptcy due to high inflation and extreme energy prices. "If the federal government does not react here with short-term legal measures to compensate for inflation and energy costs through a cost-covering surcharge on the flat-rate per case, hospitals will no longer be able to pay within a very short time," says a letter from the President of the Bavarian District Association, Thomas Karmasin (CSU), to Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD).
Karmasin, himself a district administrator in Fürstenfeldbruck, therefore called for "short-term legislative measures" to ensure the solvency of the hospitals quickly, but also permanently.
"The high increase in the general cost of living as well as the hospital-specific material costs have increased the operating cost deficits of many hospitals in recent months to such an extent that quite a few of them have found themselves in need of existence. The short-term cost increases that are now occurring in the area of energy supply, which are also affecting the hospitals are confronted with cannot be offset by the operating costs due to the financing logic," stressed Karmasin.
For their part, the hospitals could not pass on the cost increases since their services would be remunerated via case flat rates. "At the same time, supplier clinics are being confronted with ever higher prices," wrote Karmasin.
The districts, as carriers of municipal hospitals, could under no circumstances take on the additional cost increases, as they often had to cope with ongoing deficits from the financing of operating costs and were often already at the limits of their capacity, it said. In his letter, Karmasin also reminded that the employees in the hospitals had worked under enormous pressure during the past few months during the Corona crisis.
