The federal government wants to secure the care of the growing number of intensive care patients with compensatory payments to hospitals. Hospitals are to receive financial aid for keeping beds free. Clinics in hotspot areas should receive special financial support. This emerges from a key issues paper of the Ministry of Health, which is available to the editorial network Germany. Clinics that postpone operations and other interventions during the corona pandemic should “receive financial compensation in the short term in order to avoid negative consequences and liquidity bottlenecks,” the paper says. The federal states, which are basically responsible for the planning of the hospitals, should determine which clinics benefit from the equalization payments.
Clinics in hotspot regions with more than 250 new infections in seven days per 100,000 inhabitants should also be able to receive compensation regardless of how large their free intensive care capacities are. In this way, the overall capacities are to be expanded.
