The „Hospital Rating Report 2019“ refers to data from a total of 877 hospitals nationwide with a market share of 70 percent based on sales. It draws on 466 annual financial statements from 2016 and 84 from 2017. An analysis by the Leibniz Institute for Economic Research (RWI) and the Institute for Healthcare Business GmbH (hcb), which collaborated with Deloitte and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), provides the facts of the current state of the hospitals in Germany, here in brief: According to this analysis, the economic situation has deteriorated again from 2016 to 2017. Twelve percent of hospitals were threatened with insolvency (only seven percent in 2016). At Group level, 28 percent reported an annual loss (2016: 13 percent). According to the analysis, the deterioration can be attributed to the lower number of inpatient cases, but also to the increase in outpatient treatment. Other negative influences on the status quo include the lack of staff and scarce staffing levels, a high degree of saturation for cardiological and orthopaedic treatments, for example, and increasing audits by the Medical Service of Health Insurance (MDK). Non-profit and private clinics as well as large clinics perform better than small, non-specialised and public hospitals. According to the Fifteenth Hospital Report, experts recommend holistic reimbursement models with the abolition of outpatient and inpatient systems, which are considered separately from each other. In this context, too, the aim is to strive for health care that is as cross-sectoral as possible using so-called capitation models for defined regions of Germany in which morbidity-oriented regional budgets are used. For patients, this means that if they are dissatisfied with the treatment in their region, they will seek outpatient specialised care in another region. The analysts also come to the conclusion that the pressure to act in the area of health care professionals is increasing. An excessively high quota of part-time instead of full-time employees is only one problem, and increasing early retirement and insufficient skills in nursing make the profession unattractive. Robotic assistance and AI, but also foreign nursing staff could relieve the tense situation, even over a decade.
