In view of the growing burden, the Hanseatic city of Rostock is throwing a 50-year-old regulation for rescue operations overboard. In the future, ambulances would no longer drive regularly to the University Medical Center (UMR) on odd calendar days and to the Südstadt Clinic on even days, the city announced on Wednesday. From October 1st, the consecutive number should decide instead: Odd numbers are assigned to the UMR and even numbers to the Südstadtklinikum. For example, traffic jams of ambulances in front of the emergency room should be prevented.
According to the decades-old rule, emergency rooms had so-called hot days when they were regularly run and cold days when they were normally not run and were less busy. Apparently, this regulation was made orally at the time. The city could not find any documentation on this. The new regulation aims to distribute the revenue more evenly.
The desire to change came from emergency services. These recorded an increasing burden. According to the city, emergency rooms have registered a 15 percent increase in patient numbers since 2018. The city and both houses are assuming an increase for the future. This has something to do with the aging of the population, partly with the difficulty of reaching doctors given their workload, but also with increasing use of the emergency call and an ambulance in non-critical cases. More patients would also come from the district.
According to the UMR, about 70 to 80 patients are admitted to the emergency room on hot days – about half of the patients who present. In the Südstadtklinikum there are a little less. So far, this not inconsiderable number of beds had to be vacated before the next hot day. That is now no longer necessary.
In exceptional cases, such as at the patient’s explicit request, in the case of referrals from the family doctor or if certain specialties are affected, it should be possible to deviate from the regulation on the distribution of patients. Likewise, people who come to the emergency room themselves can choose freely.
According to the city, the emergency services drove more than 30,000 calls in 2021.
