ÖVP prestige project

Uncomfortable questions about the new “Styrian outpatient clinics”

Georg Schwarzl (left) asks Karlheinz Kornhäusl many questions

(Bild: Krone KREATIV/Christian Jauschowetz, Marusa Puhek)

The ÖVP's prestige project "Styrian Outpatient Clinics" has become the slimmed-down version "Med Mobil 1450". Politically, however, the issue is still simmering: the Greens are asking uncomfortable questions of ÖVP Provincial Councillor Karlheinz Kornhäusl - for example about funding.

What remains of the "Styrian outpatient clinics" that ÖVP state governor Christopher Drexler announced at the beginning of the year in order to improve healthcare? As Krone readers have known since the beginning of June, this was initially a pilot project in three regions. And instead of actual outpatient clinics, it is an extended visiting service for which the provincial government finally gave the green light this week.

In future, doctors will not only come to patients' homes until 11 p.m., but even until 4 a.m. if they have any complaints. They must call the 1450 hotline.

Three new regions from the fall
"Med Mobil 1450" is therefore now the name that is already familiar in Graz. From the fall, the service will also be available in the Leibnitz-Wildon, Bruck-Kindberg and Weiz-Gleisdorf regions. It will initially be limited to six months, after which it will be checked whether there is a need at all.

In a written question to Karlheinz Kornhäusl, State Councillor for Health, the Greens demand "clarification on the implementation of the Styrian outpatient clinics as a slimmed-down Med Mobil 1450 pilot project" with 14 questions. Tricky: The project was not recently discussed and voted on publicly at the meeting of the health platform - as is generally the case - but was to be sealed by circular resolution.

State must pay itself
However: "As has since become known, Kornhäusl was unable to convince the social insurance company to finance Drexler's castle in the air with money from the health fund. The emergency brake should have been pulled by now at the latest," rages Georg Schwarzl, the Green health spokesman. The project was financed without further ado from state funds: "The ÖVP is now trying to save a failed election promise with taxpayers' money. That is shocking!"