The federal government is reforming emergency care: emergency services and emergency care must be relieved
In the event of an emergency, patients should be treated more quickly in the future Photo: Monika Skolimowska/dpa
In case of emergency, patients must be treated more quickly. That is the main objective of the reform of the law on urgent medical care, which the federal government decided on Wednesday. ‘Acute control centres’ must be created that assess the urgency of the treatment and refer patients to the appropriate treatment. To this end, the emergency number 112 and the statutory on-call service 116117 of the health insurance will be linked in the future.
Until now, doctors’ offices, hospital emergency departments and rescue services have not been sufficiently coordinated, often leaving the latter overloaded. “We have problems with emergency departments and rescue services, and we will solve both problems with the reform,” he said. Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD) Wednesday at a press conference.
The university hospitals welcome the reform: it ensures that “patients in health-threatening situations are specifically referred to the right care structures,” explains Jens Scholz, president of the Association of University Hospitals. “This more efficient control can lead to better care and a reduction in the burden on the emergency department,” says the president.
In addition, the reform provides for the connection of integrated alarm centres to hospitals. According to the bill, the aim of the reform is “to guarantee uniform and equivalent emergency care throughout the country”. Up until now, there has been a gap between the medical care in cities and rural areasBut whether the reform can close this gap is controversial.
Criticism of reforms
Katrin Vogler, spokeswoman for health policy on the left, criticized the reform as insufficient: “The Lauterbach reform does not address the most obvious problem: the extremely underfunded emergency care in hospitals. This is bad news for patients and staff.” Underfunded emergency rooms lead to understaffed emergency rooms, and the law will do nothing to change that, Vogler said.
Lauterbach said Wednesday he expected the law to come into effect around New Year’s Eve. A concept for equipping control centers and the infrastructure for combining emergency calls still needs to be developed.