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The hospital reform is considered a prestige project by Health Minister Karl Lauterbach

Photo: Bernd Weißbrod / dpa

Many clinics in Germany are in the red.

This should change with the Ministry of Health's clinic reform.

Karl Lauterbach's house has now developed a new draft bill, which is available to SPIEGEL.

The reform is intended to introduce a new compensation method.

Hospitals should then no longer treat as many patients as possible for reasons of revenue.

In the future, clinics will only have to generate 40 percent of their income themselves

Clinics currently receive a flat rate of euros per patient or treatment case.

These per-case flat rates should be reduced.

In return, there should be fixed amounts for the provision of staff, an emergency room or necessary medical technology.

In the future, the clinics should receive 60 percent of the remuneration simply for providing services.

The basis for financing by the health insurance companies should be more precisely defined service groups.

They are intended to ensure uniform quality standards.

According to the draft bill, extra money will be budgeted from 2027 onwards for the provision of pediatric medicine wards (288 million euros), obstetric wards (120 million euros), stroke wards (35 million euros) and intensive care units (30 million euros).

The federal states are responsible for hospital planning.

According to the draft bill, internal medicine and general surgery wards should be reachable by car in a maximum of 30 minutes.

For the other performance groups, the travel time should be a maximum of 40 minutes.

The planning should also take into account the number of residents who would be affected by longer travel times if there are no corresponding services in their local area.

Most recently it was said that the draft law would be passed in the cabinet on April 24th.

According to Lauterbach, “major quality deficits” should be reduced through more specialization.

Today, a third of cancer treatments are carried out in those two thirds of German clinics that do not understand this well due to a lack of experience.

The result is serious complications such as sepsis (blood poisoning), said Lauterbach at the end of January.

The reform will significantly change the hospital landscape.

So far there are over-supplied cities and under-supplied areas in rural regions.

svs/dpa