"Can't be"

Bitter pill: Vienna wants to lock out guest patients

Patients from Lower Austria are suddenly being referred to as "surgery tourists".

(Bild: stock.adobe.com - Gorodenkoff Productions OU)

"Raising borders between the federal provinces will not make care faster or better for anyone. It is unacceptable that our compatriots cannot receive treatment in Viennese hospitals because of their main place of residence," warns Ludwig Schleritzko, Provincial Councillor for Lower Austria. 

The background: SPÖ City Councillor for Health Peter Hacker has introduced upper limits for guest patients from Lower Austria and Burgenland in Vienna - with the exception of acute patients. The aim: in future, "surgery tourists" should be able to avoid their own federal state for scheduled operations in clinics. This is because, as the city council explains, up to more than one billion in additional costs have been incurred each year.

It is unacceptable that people from Lower Austria cannot receive treatment in a Viennese hospital because of their main place of residence.

Landesrat Ludwig Schleritzko

But the calculation is not quite right: a new financial equalization agreement was concluded a few months ago. A central regulation for the relationship between the provinces was that the so-called 15a agreement regulates compensation for patients from other provinces who are treated in Vienna. This means that Vienna receives 26 percent of the funding for hospitals based on population figures, while Lower Austria, for example, only receives 14.5 percent.

Lower Austria pays Vienna 500 million euros annually
Accordingly, the state of Lower Austria pays its share of almost 500 million euros per year for the compensation of guest patients in Vienna. There is a simple reason for this: "Because we don't want to carry out the financial compensation on the backs of the patients. This has been tried and tested for decades. If Vienna now deviates from this and does not treat patients from Lower Austria, this would mean a breach of the financial equalization", says Ludwig Schleritzko, the provincial councillor responsible for the clinics.

"The financial equalization must not be carried out on the backs of the patients", explains Ludwig Schleritzko (ÖVP), Provincial Councillor for Lower Austria.

(Bild: Klaus Schindler)

A piquant fact: the financial equalization and thus the horizontal distribution of funds was decided unanimously and also with Vienna's vote by City Councillor Hanke in 2023. The City of Vienna now wants to deviate from this. Schleritzko: "If Vienna now wants to draw borders within our federal state between the federal provinces, especially in the health sector, then we need to rethink our fundamental way of living together in Austria. In the health sector in particular, we should create synergies, work together and support each other at a time like this. I say this out of deep conviction and cannot emphasize it often enough: People's health is not suitable for exchanging political small change!"

200,000 Lower Austrians commute to Vienna
200,000 people from Lower Austria commute to Vienna to do their jobs, thus paying municipal tax and subway tax and creating added value in Vienna. Commuters generate a quarter of Vienna's gross regional product, or just under 26 billion euros of the 100 billion euros gross regional product. In addition, the number of commuters from Lower Austria to Vienna increased by 117 percent between 1990 and 2020.