Supply no longer secured: Dahmen calls for help for overloaded clinics

High energy prices and a corona pandemic that is picking up speed are affecting German clinics.

Supply no longer secured: Dahmen calls for help for overloaded clinics

High energy prices and a corona pandemic that is picking up speed are affecting German clinics. Green health expert Dahmen sees the supply at risk and calls for support. Tasks that general practitioners could take on should not be treated in the hospital.

Green health politician Janosch Dahmen warns of gaps in patient care in view of the increasing personnel and liquidity problems in clinics and calls for rapid relief. "The restriction of the supply capacities of our hospitals is extremely worrying," the member of the Bundestag told the "Spiegel". "In many places, the emergency rooms and the rescue service in particular are completely overwhelmed. In an emergency, they find it difficult to refer their patients to a suitable clinic or transfer them to wards with further care," says Dahmen.

The recent increase in Covid patients is encountering an already dramatic shortage of staff - "on the one hand because the staff are often absent due to illness themselves, on the other hand because the people in the health care system simply can't go on in the third year of the pandemic," said the health policy spokesman for the Green Party. parliamentary group.

Dahmen, himself a doctor, called on the federal and state governments to take action in "Spiegel". "We must immediately stabilize the economic situation of the latches," he said. In addition, hospitals would have to focus on core tasks: "All treatments that can also be provided outside of a hospital, for example in a doctor's office or a medical care center, must now also be relocated there," warned Dahmen. He also called for medical capacities to be pooled. In this way, fewer and fewer healthcare professionals would be distributed among the same "far too large number" of hospital locations: "The quality and quantity of our care have been suffering from this for years, and with it the patients and staff," criticized Dahmen.

He insisted on rapid reforms in the hospital system: "It would be foolish if we didn't start fundamentally reorganizing our hospital landscape in the short term - along the necessary supply requirements, the required quality and the obviously scarce human resources available." According to Dahmen, he assumes that the federal and state governments will soon agree on far-reaching proposals for a comprehensive hospital and emergency reform.