Emergency taking under pressure: Record numbers in German hospitals!

Emergency taking under pressure: Record numbers in German hospitals!

The increasing number of patients in German emergency rooms are a current and worrying topic. In 2023, around 12.4 million outpatient emergencies in hospitals were treated in hospitals in Germany, which means the highest value since the start of recording in 2018, as hna . This development follows a significant decline during Covid-19 pandemic, which is overcompensated by increasing the number of cases in recent years. More and more people are looking for emergency rooms, which increasingly affects the capacities of the hospitals.

The Clinic Bad Hersfeld and the district hospital (KKH) in Rotenburg are particularly affected. In 2024 there were almost 12,000 patient contacts in the emergency room, which corresponds to an increase of 9.7 percent compared to 2023. Dr. Stefan Kortüm, chief physician of the clinical acute and emergency medicine, attributed the increase to several factors. Among other things, this results from the closure of the Melsung hospital, which increasingly come to the KKH patients from neighboring land circles.

challenge for emergency care

The constant expansion of the range of services in the KKH has also led to an increasing number of patients. It is interesting that around 5,000 of the 12,000 emergency patients were self -presenters in 2024 who came to the emergency room without medical assignment. The same applies to another 5,000 patients brought there by the emergency services. It is alarming that 37 to 38 percent of the emergencies were admitted to inpatient, which corresponds to the national average, but raises the question of how these patients really represented an emergency.

At the Clinic Bad Hersfeld, the number of patients also increases continuously, even if no specific figures are published. The inpatient treatment needs there recently was a maximum of 40 percent, which indicates that there may not always be an actual emergency. The strong increase in patient numbers shows that emergency care in Germany is under great pressure.

long -term trends and forecasts

The data from Destatis prove that around 9.8 million outpatient emergencies were treated in German hospitals. This corresponded to an increase of 3.9 percent compared to the previous year. In 2020, the Covid 19 pandemic ensured a dramatic decline with only 9.4 million treatments. Nevertheless, the situation recovered in the following years, which leads to an overload of the emergency room.

In 2021, the number of fully inpatient treatment cases was 16.7 million, and around 82 percent of the 1,886 hospitals in Germany were emergency outpatient clinics. The pressure on emergency care is reinforced by the steadily increasing number of cases and the high number of unusual self -presenters in the hospitals.

The challenges in emergency medicine are currently enormous, and constant efforts are required to ensure the quality and availability of health care in Germany in the long term. Further information on the emergency supply can be found in Factsheet des dki