GER: Hospital Reform – What Will Change?

Nov 8, 2024 Benn-Ibler Rechtsanwälte

After two long years of negotiations, the German Coalition Government is poised to implement its hospital reform, aiming to reduce the number of hospitals and improve to quality. This will reduce financial pressure on hospitals, allowing them to increase specialisation.

The plan is to change the current system of flat-rate payments for treatment in clinics. Instead, clinics will receive 60% of the payment for providing services. This should reduce the pressure to treat as many cases as possible.

Ensuring and improving the quality of treatment, ensuring comprehensive medical care for patients, and reducing bureaucracy are the three main objectives of the hospital reform.

In future, hospitals that provide essential services will be paid a lump sum, i.e. they will be paid for the offering of treatment. This will serve as a kind of guarantee for the survival of hospitals, even if they treat only a relatively small number cases. The result will be that quality, rather than quantity, will be the determinant of care. Patients will have the reassurance that the treatment they are in need of is really necessary and will be done well.

The new system will replace the outdated fee-per-case system. In contrast to the new system based on time or individual services, the fee-per-case system reimbursed medical services on the basis of fixed amounts per case.

So far, the German Bundestag has approved the reform. Now the bill has to go through the Bundesrat. It does not need to be approved there, but can still be held up by the Mediation Committee.

Press Release of the German Federal Ministry of Health on the hospital reform (8 October 2024)