At the press conference of Thuringia’s Health Minister Heike Werner, Rainer Striebel, CEO of AOK PLUS, said
„In recent years, the Thuringian state government, together with the stakeholders in the health care system in Thuringia, has set the right course to make the hospital structure in the Free State future-proof and in the interests of the people. This process will not be completed quickly. Not only because of the planned federal legislation, but also because structures cannot be changed overnight. Quick decisions or promises that cannot be kept due to the current election campaign do not help anyone. Health care should not be an election issue, but should follow a cross-party consensus.
The structural reform is necessary because the system is currently still inefficient: last year, Thuringian hospitals were only 64 percent full on average, and five hospitals were even less than 50 percent full. No hospital can be run economically with such a low occupancy rate over a longer period of time. Specialization and centralization of services, as planned in the current hospital plan, are the right way to meet current challenges such as falling case numbers and the shortage of skilled workers. And they also benefit patients: the more experience hospitals have in treating illnesses, the better the quality of treatment.
It is a fact that, despite the increase in recent years, the investment rate of hospitals is well below the necessary rate of eight percent of their revenues. They need this to maintain and develop their structures. Clinics have to finance necessary investments from their operating funds, which they receive from health insurance companies for patient treatment. This money is then missing to finance the increased wage costs, price increases, etc. and puts the clinics in financial difficulties. And this despite the fact that the expenditure of statutory health insurance companies for hospitals in Thuringia increased by 318 million euros between 2021 and 2023.
We firmly reject the demand to increase hospital revenues through more money from statutory health insurance. This places a one-sided burden on contributors without changing the quality of medical care for people. Instead of asking statutory health insurance to pay, the state government must meet its obligation to cover the full investment costs of hospitals.
In our view, the federal legislature also has a responsibility. The investment obligation must be anchored in the law as a task for society as a whole and must not be placed solely on the shoulders of health insurance companies and states.”
Rainer StriebelV
Chairman of the Board of AOK PLUS
