BERLIN, July 11 (Xinhua) -- German hospitals are facing increasing financial pressure after 70 percent of them finished 2023 with a deficit, according to a management survey published by consultancy Roland Berger on Thursday.
More than half of the 650 hospital managers surveyed saw the liquidity of their institutions currently at risk. More than one in four, 28 percent, of hospitals were classified as being at risk of insolvency until the end of 2024, according to the survey.
"The dramatic situation of German hospitals does not just affect individual organizations or care levels, but is an industry-wide phenomenon," said Peter Magunia, partner at Roland Berger. The deficits were also increasingly "restricting the hospitals' scope for entrepreneurial actions."
The German Hospital Federation (DKG) warned of massive restrictions in inpatient care in the coming years. There were 40 hospital insolvencies last year, more than ever before, and 2024 is set to break the previous year's negative record again, according to the federation.
In May, the German government agreed to a hospital reform package to "reduce financial pressures on hospitals and improve care quality." It is, however, only scheduled to come into force at the beginning of 2025.
"We need more specialization, we need less bureaucracy and we need secure funding for the hospitals that we urgently need in particular in rural areas," Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach said at the end of June in the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament, upon the presentation of the draft law.
If Germany's hospital reforms are not implemented, around 25 percent of the currently more than 1,700 hospitals in the country would go bankrupt by 2030, according to Lauterbach.
