>> The reason for this step is quite simple: “Since our main work is primarily the further development of regional approaches, we need pre-financing for a certain period of time,” explains Dr. rer. medic. H. c. Helmut Hildebrandt, the CEO of OptiMedis AG, whose focus has been on the development and management of regional population-based IV systems for many years. For example, from 2005 to 2018, in addition to his board position at OptiMedis, he was also the managing director of Gesundes Kinzigtal GmbH, which is responsible for integrated care in the Ortenau district in Baden-Württemberg. He is also managing director of Gesunder Werra-Meißner-Kreis GmbH in northern Hesse. His company is involved in Gesunder Schwalm-Eder-Kreis+ GmbH and has helped build the health network “Health for Bill-stedt/Horn” over several years. All of this requires money, often well before public funding can even be applied for. And it is often longer than a classic funding phase - usually only three to four years.
“If we want to build up additional regions, we have to provide the necessary pre-financing,” Hildebrandt knows from his numerous projects. He is finding investors more and more often. These are usually partners in the respective regions who either want to become part of a regional network or want to invest in one - with or without a regional connection.
One of them is the social impact investor BonVenture from Munich, the first investment company in German-speaking countries that focuses on the social impact of companies, i.e. only invests in companies that create social added value with their work. He has been involved in OptiMedis since 2017 and is currently expanding his investment. This is now accompanied by the conversion of the bonds received in 2019 into shares. Some of OptiMedis' companions want to continue investing, just as employees want to get more involved.

“We now want to use this new money to build new health regions and we can use the current positive mood to do this,” says Hildebrandt, setting out the goal. By this he means, among other things, the support that regionalized care approaches receive from, among others, the Green Party's candidate for chancellor, Annalena Baerbock (1), who brought up the topic of health regions in her last speech.
A proposal from the Greens on this topic was recently discussed in the Health Committee of the Bundestag, which aims to “Health regions – a move towards more reliability, cooperation and regional anchoring in our health care”. This application literally states: “The existing economic incentives must be given greater consideration in order to support cooperation and networking. The previous remuneration systems, which are separated by sector, narrow the view of the individual - i.e. sector-specific - economic result. What is needed here is a cooperative economy that promotes the view of all actors in regional supply solutions for the whole and not only serves the interests of the individual.”
It is clear that this is entirely in line with Hildebrandt. He's not all that innocent about it either. In July/August 2020, he and numerous co-authors initiated a highly acclaimed series (2) in the magazine “World of Health Insurance” that addressed “integrated care as sustainable standard care at the regional level”.
The topic of the health region is gradually coming onto the political agenda. At national and state level, such as in a study commission in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, in which Hildebrandt gave a presentation. “After many years of standstill, I am seeing a bit of a departure,” says the OptiMedis boss, who has been tirelessly working on this issue in Germany for two decades. Now he sees more than just a light at the end of the tunnel and wants to pass on his know-how and that of his company, but also expand it further. Hildebrandt: “We want to bring in new people who are even more qualified in medical science and the topic of digitalization.” This also costs capital initially because reinvestments through projects often take many years.
Hildebrandt actually sees possible projects everywhere. At the municipal or state level, but also with traditional service providers in sectors. “We are currently seeing great interest in this topic in the hospital sector, for example, because large hospital operators in particular are realizing that the current DRG system is moving in a direction that they do not want to go in,” says the OptiMedis boss, who of course also does so straight away has suitable solution approaches in the outpatient and inpatient setting. No wonder, because this setting actually occurs in all of the regional projects he helped initiate. There is definitely a lot of interest because there are already a number of regions that have already inquired about it. Hildebrandt is not surprised by this, now that there is sufficient scientific evidence for the benefits of regional care approaches.
According to Hildebrandt, the OptiMedis model can actually be implemented in pretty much every region in Germany. However, with one restriction: These are all regions with high volatility when it comes to emigration and immigration relations. He explains it this way: “With our models, we invest in the health of the people who live in a certain region. Conversely, this means that with every single move away, part of the investment is lost.” <<

1: https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/zdfheute-live/gruenen-kanzlerkannur-wahl-baerbock-rede-video-100.html
2: Hildebrandt et al.: “Integrated care as sustainable standard care at the regional level”, in “World of Health Insurance”, from 7-8/2020