BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - The hospital landscape in Germany is to be fundamentally restructured according to the will of the federal and state governments. Both sides want to work on a major hospital reform in the coming months, as Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) and state representatives announced on Thursday after joint consultations. Accordingly, a first draft bill for the reform is to be presented by the summer break. Lauterbach emphasized a joint approach, "so that afterwards you have a reform on which everyone has worked together."

The switching conference dealt with the implementation of proposals from a commission of experts on the reform of hospital structures and

-financing. In the future, clinics are to receive less money based on the number of cases treated.

according to the number of cases treated. Instead, the provision of beds, personnel and certain services is to be more strongly rewarded. This is intended to take economic pressure off the hospitals. In addition, greater specialization of hospitals is planned.

"We are on the eve of a necessary revolution in the hospital sector," Lauterbach said. Without a major reform, he said, many hospitals would go bankrupt. The reform needs approval from the states, according to the minister. These are responsible for hospital planning and also for investments in the hospitals. The health insurance companies pay for the treatments that are done in the hospitals, which is a federal matter.

The current chairman of the Conference of State Health Ministers, Baden-Württemberg's Minister Manne Lucha (Greens), spoke of a very good day for federal-state relations. He said it was very honorable that both were pulling in the same direction on the issue. The reform is about having the right hospital with the right quality in the right place.

The federal and state governments now face a complicated coordination process. Daniela Behrens (SPD), the health minister of Lower Saxony, spoke of a "mammoth task" after the consultations in Berlin. Her counterpart from North Rhine-Westphalia, Karl-Josef Laumann (CDU), emphasized the competence of the states in hospital planning, saying this must remain so for good reasons. "You can't put a federal template over hospitals."

The German Hospital Association (DKG) welcomed the reform project as "absolutely necessary," but urged quick action. The DKG fears a wave of insolvencies. Association head Gerald Gaß told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur that the planned major structural reform would only take effect in the medium term. "However, we must end the cold structural change now and free the hospitals from structural underfunding." He called for "appropriate refinancing" of increased costs due to inflation, for example.

Lauterbach pointed out that the hospitals would be compensated 100 percent for additional energy costs through the federal government's relief measures. This amounts to six billion euros by April 2024, he said./jr/DP/ngu