Berlin – Faced with the federal elections, the interest and the importance of health due to the pandemic, the question arises: What really needs to change in the health system? I have answers to that German medical journal delivered to 18 experts in a series of interviews. The central themes of the respondents:
Less lack of time in care, more medical professionals, exceeding the limits of the sector, as well as more investments in hospitals and better salaries in care. These are just five demands and wishes that have been identified as the most important reform areas for a future government. This was followed by the digital participation of medical staff and patients, the strengthening of the public health service, and a greater commitment of the medical profession to the effects of climate change.
Guido Pukies, Neuss’s GP, sums it up like this: “From a GP’s point of view, all problems are symptoms of what I call ‘lack of doctor’s time.’ The shortage of specialists also plays a role, either among medical professionals, but especially among nursing and IT specialists who are supposed to support clinics and practices in the implementation of digitization projects. “We need IT specialists to enable innovations through digitization in hospitals. So we also have to be in a position to pay them properly, ”says Jörg Noetzel, medical director of Mühlenkreiskliniken in Minden.
Kathrin Leffler, director of nursing at BG Klinikum Unfallkrankenhaus Berlin, demands that temporary work in nursing care must be prohibited or severely restricted. “You can earn a lot of money by hiring nursing employees, mainly from companies that place workers.” Member of the European Parliament and physician Peter Liese (CDU) also promotes more recognition, good pay and better working conditions.
Overcoming the boundaries of the sector is the next major goal of health policy, cited by experts. “Finally we have to establish really intersectoral care,” says Gernot Marx, an intensive care physician at Aachen University. Eckhard Nagel, University of Bayreuth, goes one step further: “It is urgent to solve a simplification of GBS V by formulating a separate chapter for people with interdisciplinary, intersectoral and interprofessional treatment needs.”
Antje Bergmann, a general practitioner at the University of Dresden, demands that those “actively involved in medical care” lead the political discourse. “It feels like spokespeople and opinion leaders rather than doctors, scientists and caregivers discuss essential issues.”
From the experts’ point of view, digitization can help you in the future, provided you start in the right place. “In the future, the focus will be on medical documentation and not documentation for billing purposes,” demands Sylvia Thun de la Charité. This also includes the corresponding standardization processes for data exchange. Family doctor Susanne Springborn from Wiesbaden advocates for new models to also engage people who are away from technology: “We should ‧ urgently establish a digitization assistant for people who are away from technology.”
Climate change and health consequences will also play an important role in the future: “We need strategies to adapt to the effects of climate change. This includes heat protection plans and early warning systems, ”says Claudia Traidl-Hoffmann of the University of Augsburg. © bee / aerzteblatt.de
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