In the second year of the corona pandemic, German hospitals treated significantly fewer patients than usual. This is the result of an evaluation of the billing data from AOK policyholders, the results of which the scientific institute presented to the health insurance company on Tuesday.

Compared to the number of cases in 2019, i.e. the last year before the start of the Corona crisis, the number of cases treated in 2021 fell by 14 percent.

In 2020, the decline was at a similarly high level of 13 percent.

Kim Bjorn Becker

Editor in Politics.

  • Follow I follow

The decline in treatments in the first two months of the current year was particularly evident.

"In January and February 2022 compared to 2019, there was a decrease of 22 percent in somatic and 14 percent in psychiatric cases," said Jürgen Klauber, the institute's managing director.

The reason he gave was the high number of infections, which would have led to staff shortages in the clinics.

As a result, it became necessary to cancel operations and other treatments.

The Institute is critical of the decline.

The number of heart attack patients treated in hospital in 2021 fell by nine percent compared to 2019, and the drop in stroke patients was seven percent.

However, it cannot be assumed that Germans have recently fallen ill less frequently.

Doctors expect that the number of strokes is likely to increase over time due to the aging of the population.

But the pandemic did not only affect the supply situation in emergency care.

Significantly fewer colonoscopies have also been carried out in the hospitals because of Corona;

According to experts, preventive medical check-ups are important in order to be able to treat possible diseases at an early stage.

"The concern here is that a lack of diagnostics and subsequent treatment will lead to more serious cancers, higher tumor stages at the time of initial diagnosis and an increase in mortality," said Klauber.

According to AOK CEO Carola Reimann, the data also shows that more specialization is needed in hospital care.

There are too many clinic locations.

Reimann called on the federal government to use the announced hospital reform to restructure the care structures.

The German Hospital Society disagreed with the demand that clinics should be closed.

Rather, the heart attack and stroke numbers showed that many milder cases were not treated at all because patients feared avoiding the hospital.