The leading pediatric professional associations in Germany - such as the Society of Children's Hospitals - are up in arms against Lauterbach's plans to improve the financing of children's hospitals.
Ruediger Soldt
Political correspondent in Baden-Württemberg.
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The minister's plan to pay 100 percent to children's hospitals, which provide 80 percent of the performance of 2019, is considered by the doctors to be an "absurd misdirection".
The board of directors of the Klinikum Stuttgart, Jan Steffen Jürgensen, told the FAZ: “This means that capacities are held back, only small clinics in the country benefit from this regulation.”
The Ölgäle children's hospital is also part of the largest maximum care facility in Baden-Württemberg. With almost 500 beds, it is the largest pediatric hospital in Germany.
It would be better than Lauterbach's suggestion, which looks like a free bonus, to pay 1.2 times the remuneration for services in paediatrics.
Lauterbach's plans meant that large houses that provided 100 percent were left with their deficits.
The conditions and the overload in paediatrics are dramatic: the emergency room at the "Oilgäle" is 200 percent full, young people have to be transferred to adult wards, seriously ill children have to be transferred to other houses at great risk.
It is not without reason, according to Jürgensen, that the Charité has postponed all operations that can be planned.
The "Olgäle" makes a loss of ten million euros every year, with every heart catheter examination in pediatric cardiology, his house posts a loss of 1,500 euros.
According to Jürgensen, it would be better if Lauterbach followed the recommendations of his expert commission.