Staff absences due to illness can also push emergency rooms in clinics to their limits. However, it is not a mass phenomenon that overloaded emergency departments report to the rescue coordination center.
Erfurt (dpa/th) - Despite the sometimes tense staffing situation in hospitals in Corona times, experts believe that the operation of the emergency rooms there will be secured for the foreseeable future. "We are not aware of any permanent bottlenecks in Thuringia," said the managing director of the Thuringian State Hospital Society, Rainer Poniewaß, in a survey by the German Press Agency. Depending on the respective workload, temporary admission stops are nothing unusual, but closures of emergency rooms, for example at the weekend, are not foreseeable.
According to a spokeswoman, the Ministry of Health has not received any reports or information about special problems. In the Free State, all 45 hospitals treated emergencies according to their care mandate, according to Poniewaß. Peak loads could arise due to illness-related staff absences in the clinics with a large number of patients at the same time.
In extreme cases, emergency departments could temporarily log out of the rescue coordination center due to overload. Patients who are picked up by the emergency services would then be distributed to other emergency rooms. But that only happens in isolated cases and cannot be foreseen or planned, explains Poniewaß.
A few such cases had also recently become known in Thuringia. In any case, adequate first aid and safe transfer to another hospital must be ensured, according to the Ministry of Health.
According to the state hospital company, patients who are not real emergencies and still use the emergency room - for example because the family doctor is closed at weekends or at night - cause additional stress. Such patients would also not be sent away due to the duty of care, but longer waiting times should be expected.
For acute, but not life-threatening health problems outside of the regular office hours, the medical on-call service is actually responsible on the nationwide telephone number 116 117. According to Poniewaß, little is known about this offer.
"The initial medical assessment (triage) that is customary in emergency rooms determines the order of treatment so that care is provided according to the symptoms and symptoms," explains Gesine Grimm for the Helios hospitals in Meiningen, Gotha, Blankenhain and Erfurt. Due to the high number of patients due to the season, there may be longer waiting times than usual at the moment.
According to the state hospital association, additional staff, a reduction in bureaucracy and less regulation by the legislature would be necessary to avoid temporary cancellations. In recent years, the rigid personnel requirements of federal legislation have increasingly distanced themselves from the reality of care and the depiction of the actual care situation.
According to the Thuringian Hospital Act, all Thuringian clinics are primarily obliged to take in and care for emergency patients as part of their healthcare mandate and their performance. The Ministry of Health does not have any concrete data on waiting times in the emergency rooms.
