Hospitals in Germany Ready Themselves for the Worst

The Helios-Kliniken, another chain of hospitals, is also only postponing procedures “if a medical assessment determines it can be assumed that the patient can manage without this care for the next two months.” The company said that all procedures that cannot be delayed, will be carried out as quickly as possible in order to take advantage of the capacities that are still currently available.”

Mathias Eberenz, spokesman for Asklepios, which operates 160 hospitals, told DER SPIEGEL, “Arthroscopy can certainly be done at the moment, but we are keeping resources free for ventilation patients and we also have the ability to create additional beds with ventilators. We are responding to the federal government’s request and we are monitoring the intensive care capacities we have available daily. We are gradually freeing up our intensive care capacities in internal medicine and postponing any unnecessary operations that can be planned in advance and would require significant care afterward.”

Still Awaiting Government Compensation

Spahn’s urgent request for the postponement of non-essential operations and procedures now clearly isn’t being implemented everywhere. The companies need a little time, but they have made clear that as soon as things start getting tight, they will reassess the situation each day. This constant reassessment appears to be the basis for all important decision-making happening right now. That’s also useful from a medical perspective: Why leave an operating room empty today when a person suffering from pain could still be treated today, particularly given that treatment tomorrow might not be possible due to the corona crisis?

Of course, hospitals also have other interests in mind. Hospital doctors have been claiming for years now that their employers focus too much on profits and that the bottom line often takes precedence over a patient’s well-being. Close to 250 doctors and organizations recently warned in the weekly news and lifestyle magazine Stern that cost pressures in health care are causing massive damage, because hospitals are normally paid for the services they provide. Providing one hip operation after the other on an assembly line is a valuable source of revenue. Very few hospitals can afford to have their operating theaters empty for longer periods of time.

The Schön-Kliniken company even warned that the current situation has the potential to create financial problems for hospitals. This is because there is no mechanism in place for compensation payments right now. In his letter to the hospitals, however, Spahn pledged that action would be taken on that front. “The federal government will quickly adopt measures to ensure that the resulting economic consequences for the hospitals are compensated and that no hospital will end up in deficit. In addition, we are planning to provide a bonus for every additional intensive care bed that is provisionally created and made available.”

But Who Will Care for the Intensive Care Patients?

Uwe Janssens, chief physician at the Clinic for Internal Medicine and Internal Intensive Care Medicine at the St. Antonius Hospital in the city of Eschweiler in North Rhine-Westphalia, also estimates that the number of free intensive care beds can be increased by 30 to 60 percent if non-essential procedures – such as knee operations, gallstone removal or intestinal surgery – are postponed.

And this is the point where the problems come to light. Germany is by far the leader in Europe in terms of the number of of intensive care beds it has in relation to the number of inhabitants. Of the 497,000 beds in German hospitals, 28,000 are intensive care beds. But it is likely that patients are in fact going to be filling a lot of those beds. And they will have to be provided with care. By who though? They will need care from qualified professionals, and there is a major shortage of nurses in Germany right now. “We have been drawing attention to the shortage of skilled workers for years now,” said Asklepios spokesmen Eberenz. “But the cries for help from the hospitals, which have already been stretched to the limits for so long, haven’t helped much.”

Article source: https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/hospitals-in-germany-ready-themselves-for-the-worst-a-3fe76172-b3f4-4332-9261-561d049b151a#ref=rss