Closures planned?

Secret hospital paper shakes up politics

Vienna's City Councillor Peter Hacker wants to plan together from now on, but Lower Austria's Provincial Councillor Ludwig Schleritzko (right) has no intention of doing so.

(Bild: Krone KREATIV/ERWIN MUIK, APA/GEORG HOCHMUTH, APA/GERT EGGENBERGER)

"Krone" report sparks discussions about a care or location guarantee and joint hospital planning for the eastern region.

It was a "Krone" report that uncovered previously secret expert plans for hospital closures in parts of Lower Austria - and caused a stir beyond the borders of the largest federal state. Styrian SPÖ member Mario Lindner, for example, said that the proposed cuts would also have a "massive impact on the supply situation in Styria". Many people in Upper Styria and especially in the Liezen district are dependent on Lower Austrian hospitals. The same applies to the federal capital.

"Each federal state is responsible for the care of its own population," says Vienna's SPÖ City Councillor for Health Peter Hacker. He found out about the plans of his Lower Austrian neighbors from the "Krone" newspaper - but in a way, he is already "on the subject" anyway. As recently as the end of September, he reportedly called for an upper limit for surgical tourists in Vienna's hospitals. Every fifth patient in the capital's hospitals does not have their main residence there. This caused an uproar in Lower Austria, but also in the SPÖ-governed Burgenland. Now Hacker wants to breathe new life into old solutions.

Lower Austria rejects joint clinic planning
He had already proposed joint hospital planning for the eastern region (Vienna, Lower Austria and northern Burgenland) some time ago. However, according to Hacker, the response to this was "lackluster or non-existent". And the latest revelations are unlikely to have changed this. "The future of the hospital landscape in Lower Austria is an issue that we are discussing in Lower Austria - and not in Vienna," countered Ludwig Schleritzko (ÖVP), the provincial councillor responsible for hospitals in Lower Austria. Supra-regional care already exists and is financially compensated for in the financial equalization.

Lower Austria rejects "joint hospital planning".

(Bild: P. Huber)

Nevertheless, opinions on how to reorganize healthcare provision differ widely across the country. Lower Austria's SPÖ leader Sven Hergovich sharply criticized the plans that have become public and demanded a location guarantee for all regional hospitals.

Dispute over supply or location guarantee
Dr. Herbert Frank, Chairman of the Medical Council - and himself part of the 50-member expert committee in which the secret paper was drawn up - takes a different view. "We need to move away from a location guarantee towards a supply guarantee," he explains. In any case, the Ministry of Health was unaware of the revealed expert plans. The ministry is "not aware of any information on the plans mentioned". In principle, however, it makes sense in certain cases to merge wards and establish specialty clinics.

The fact is, however, that there is also room for improvement in the health sector budget. Only 3.2 percent of the state budget is reserved for healthcare, while 12.8 percent is reserved for civil servants' pensions, for example.