Hospital reform is not demographic safe according to patient advocates

Patients: Hospital reform is not demographic-safe
The hospital structural reform of health minister Hermann Gröhe (CDU) must be made "demographically safe", demand patient advocates. They criticize a lack of view of seniors.

Hospital reform does not meet the demands of demographic change according to experts. (Image: Warakorn / fotolia.com)

Over half of the patients are seniors
As reported by the news agency dpa, patient advocates criticize the health care minister Hermann Gröhe (CDU) for his lack of a view of the senior citizens in the reform of the hospital structure. Eugen Brysch from the German Foundation for Patient Protection demanded: "The care must be demographically safe." He explained: "Already today, about 50 percent of patients in general hospitals are over 60 years old. With age, patients need to be cared for more often and longer in the hospital. "So every second over 65 suffer from three or more chronic diseases. That presents the supply with special challenges. "Federation and countries lack the view for the whole."

Diseases are treated individually for cost reasons
"Municipal hospitals must subscribe to the basic care," said Brysch. There, especially chronically ill and old people would have to be treated holistically. For cost reasons, today diseases would be treated individually in order to settle each therapy can. This must be changed. Brysch criticized: "As long as this is unexplained and a hospital can only survive with a lot of high-performance and specialized medicine, we will continue to be the front runner in operations and unnecessary intervention. It does not do justice to the needs of the aging generation. "

Too many unnecessary interventions in Germany
Last year, the German Consumer Centers had already pointed out the point of unnecessary intervention addressed by Brysch. Among other things, it was criticized that in this country too many heart surgeries are carried out because of financial interests. At that time, health policy was urged to shift the financial incentives for clinics away from large, plannable operations to emergency and primary care. (Ad)