Abstracts by keywords: hospital planning
The medical care for patients in Germany is undisputedly one of the best in the world, and this particularly applies to the care in hospitals. However, since the introduction of the flat-rate payment system, a steady increase in the number of cases has been observed, which has now led to a critical intensification of work in hospitals. The precarious current situation is exacerbated by a reduction in personnel, partly caused by a shortage of skilled workers, partly for cost reasons, particularly in nursing, as well as by other circumstances that originated long before the introduction of the DRG system. These consist, on the one hand, in the state-side deficit in financing investment costs, which has been increasing for decades, as well as in the historically grown structural deficits in the hospital landscape - which not only means the high hospital density in Germany compared to international standards, but also, in particular, the relevant regional differences when compared within Germany (1).