The German Hospital Society (DKG) fears that more and more clinics will no longer be able to bear the financial burden and will slide into insolvency. “In 2023, our clinics will be hit by a wave of insolvencies that can hardly be stopped,” said association leader Gerald Gass to the editorial network Germany (RND).
The damage to medical care will become visible in many regions in 2023. Gass referred to the current hospital barometer of the German Hospital Institute (DKI), an annual representative survey of general hospitals in Germany. It is available to the RND. According to this, 59 percent of the clinics expect to be in the red for 2022. In 2021, this proportion was still 43 percent.
According to the survey, the proportion of hospitals with a positive annual result will more than halve, from 44 to an expected 20 percent. 21 percent expect a balanced result for 2022 after 13 percent in the previous year. For 2023, 56 percent expect the economic situation to deteriorate further. Only 17 percent of the hospitals assume that the situation will improve and 27 percent that the situation will remain the same.
Staff situation also worrying
Gass sees the financial aid planned by the federal government to compensate for increases in energy prices as helpful. However, they could not compensate for the structural deficit due to inflation-related general cost increases. In 2023, the structural deficit will add up to around 15 billion euros.
According to the survey, the staff situation in the clinics is still worrying, especially in nursing. By mid-2022, almost 90 percent of hospitals were having trouble filling open nursing positions on general wards. Compared to the previous year, the number of open nursing positions on the general wards increased from 14,400 to 20,600.
According to the DKG, the results of the Hospital Barometer 2022 are based on a representative sample of general hospitals with 100 beds or more, which was carried out from mid-April to the end of June 2022. 309 hospitals took part.
