Billions are missing in the healthcare sector. Minister Lauterbach therefore looks at Germany's lavish supply of hospital beds. As has long been customary abroad, clinics should in future be allowed to send their patients home overnight or at the weekend.
According to the will of Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach, treatments in hospitals should in future also be possible without an overnight stay in the hospital. There are too many cases of inpatient treatment in Germany that do not have to be made inpatient at all, said Lauterbach in Berlin. If that were changed, not so many beds would be needed - and nursing staff could be saved at night.
Compared to neighboring countries, Germany has a bed capacity that is around 50 percent higher and a rate of inpatient treatment that is also around 50 percent above average, said the SPD politician. The problem in Germany is that cancer treatment, for example, can only be billed as a hospital case if the patient also spends the night in the clinic. "We want to eliminate that now." Such a day treatment should then be able to be billed as a flat rate per case.
Lauterbach spoke on the occasion of a report by the government commission for modern and needs-based hospital treatment. In neighboring European countries, treatments that are possible without an overnight stay in hospital are increasingly being carried out on an outpatient basis by the clinics - such as operations or oncological treatments, according to the report. There is only a small amount of this in Germany.
Treatments without an overnight stay are established in this country in psychiatry and in a few other individual areas. "The possibility of day hospital treatment has so far had to be applied for by the hospital at great expense, with no entitlement to approval," says the report. The commission recommends that hospitals should be allowed by January 1, 2023 at the latest to "perform all inpatient treatments as day treatments, insofar as this is medically justifiable".
A day treatment should therefore be able to take place over one or more days. An interim interruption for a maximum of two days at a time, for example at the weekend, should also be possible several times. The hospitals should decide in each individual case together with the patient, based on medical and nursing criteria, whether day treatment is an option.
