>> Ms. Dr. Grebe, what’s special about Vivantes?
Vivantes - Network for Health GmbH is Germany's largest municipal hospital group. The sole shareholder is the state of Berlin. Vivantes was founded on January 1, 2001 as the successor to “NET-GE Kliniken für Berlin GmbH” and currently operates nine hospitals with over 100 clinics and institutions that have a total of more than 5,500 beds. There are also thirteen nursing homes for seniors, two retirement homes, an outpatient rehabilitation facility, a hospice, several medical care centers, an outpatient nursing facility and various subsidiaries for catering, cleaning and services such as purchasing, logistics, facility management, laundry and sterile supplies. In total (as of the end of 2015), almost 15,000 employees work for Vivantes, who - all in all - care for around a third of Berlin's hospital patients.

Is the size a burden given the strained financing situation at many hospitals?
In addition to the medical and nursing expert systems, our size enables advantages, for example in purchasing, through quantity and standardization effects, as well as an effective and efficient corporate structure. The top priority is the quality of care; the basic requirement is a balanced annual result - this is our mission. We have always managed this so far and intend to do so in the future.

What do you do differently than other clinics or clinic groups?
We don't do that much differently. Vivantes has good prerequisites based on its history. On the one hand, we operate large and very large clinics in comparison; the smallest hospital has almost 400 beds and the largest has over 1,200 beds. On the other hand, these houses are not spread all over Germany, but are concentrated in the metropolis of Berlin. However, anyone who knows Berlin knows that you still have to cover quite long distances to get from Spandau to Kaulsdorf, for example. From our administrative headquarters, this means no more than an hour's drive to reach one of our locations. But employees from other areas can also meet in person for meetings across locations within a city, which is also our strength as a network.

However, for many years the Berlin clinics were accused of providing care that was too expensive and inefficient.
This is exactly why excess capacity in Berlin was reduced quite early on. In the mid-1990s there was an enormous reduction, particularly in psychiatry, although this did not only affect purely psychiatric hospitals. However, as far as I know, the Moabit hospital was the only larger hospital that was completely closed, while others had individual capacities reduced. It was certainly a painful process back then, but also successful.

But that was before your time.
Yes and no. I was part of the “founding team” of Vivantes in 2001 and accompanied the restructuring course. This was a difficult time for our clinics, especially for the managers and employees. This process, which was certainly painful, was absolutely necessary; without it we would not be as successful today. At times it was a matter of urgency - the future as a municipal company was questioned by some people at one time or another.

Now, in the “Hospital Plan 2016” passed at the end of 2015, the Berlin Senate has planned to increase beds in the following years, while in other regions of Germany only reducing beds or even closing clinics are usually discussed.
Compared to federal states, Berlin had a bed density of 5.9 beds per 10,000 inhabitants in 2013; only Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony and Baden-Württemberg had an even lower figure. The bed density in Berlin is not very high in comparison and the city is growing.

In a European comparison, Germany as a whole is doing quite well, perhaps too well, when it comes to hospital bed density.
If you look at the data around the...

Citation information: doi: 10.24945/MVF.02.16.1866-0533.1950