Germany's healthcare sector may face a wave of insolvencies in 2023, the country's Hospital Federation (DKG) warned on Tuesday.
"The damage to healthcare will be visible in many regions," DKG Chairman Gerald Gass said in a statement. "The wave of insolvencies that was predicted several months ago is now rolling in."
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Only 6 percent of hospitals in the European Union's (EU) most populous country rate their current economic situation as "good," according to an annual survey conducted by the German Hospital Institute (DKI).
At the same time, more than one in two hospitals expect their economic situation to deteriorate further in 2023, the survey showed.
"The staff situation in hospitals, particularly in nursing, continues to be a cause for concern," the DKG said. In mid-2022, almost 90 percent of German hospitals had problems filling vacant nursing positions in general wards.
The financing of hospital investments through public subsidies is "no longer sufficient for many hospitals to meet the challenges of the future," the DKG said. Half of the investment funds used by hospitals are already provided by the private sector.
The number of hospitals in Germany has declined steadily in the last 30 years. While there were still more than 2,400 hospitals with around 665,000 beds in 1991, the figure dropped to less than 1,900 hospitals with around 480,000 beds by 2021, according to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis).
The COVID-19 pandemic and the recent increase in respiratory illnesses have shown that "we need a strong hospital system and full healthcare coverage," Gass said.
Currently, the overall number of hospitalizations in Germany with severe acute respiratory infections is at a "very high level," the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases said in its latest weekly report.
"Patients should be able to rely on receiving fast and good care everywhere, including in rural regions, and medical and not economic considerations should determine their treatment," Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said in a statement at the beginning of December.