Flood of lawsuits against a new hospital plan in NRW: What is now coming!
Flood of lawsuits against a new hospital plan in NRW: What is now coming!
On January 16, 2025, Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach presented a comprehensive hospital plan for North Rhine-Westphalia, which is faced with numerous legal challenges. Already 40 lawsuits have been submitted to the administrative courts against this new plan, which indicates significant concerns within the hospital landscape. These complaints are directed against the assessment notices of the district governments, which were sent to the hospitals in NRW on December 16, 2024.
The largest proportion of the lawsuits is not applicable to the Düsseldorf Administrative Court, where 17 procedures were registered. The Administrative Court of Aachen has recorded six complaints. Laws have also been received in Arnsberg, Gelsenkirchen, Minden and Münster. While the Administrative Court of Cologne did not provide any information on receipt of the lawsuit, a spokesman for the Düsseldorf court has so far been unable
The new hospital plan
The new hospital plan aims to make the inpatient medical care more sustainable in North Rhine-Westphalia. A central concern is the specialization of hospitals in certain treatments in order to improve the quality of the supply. Clear rules should ensure which hospitals can offer which treatments. This should avoid an overlap of the offers and thus enable more efficient structures.
The implementation of the plan is planned for April 1, 2025, with transition periods to apply until December 31, 2025. Critics, such as the German Hospital Society (DKG), say that smaller hospitals, especially in rural areas, could be closed. This could lead to longer travel routes for patients and increase the strain of larger clinics, which could affect the supply close to home.
numbers and facts about the hospital landscape in NRW
Currently, the hospital landscape in North Rhine-Westphalia includes 306 hospitals and 526 hospital locations. This means that many hospitals have several operating facilities. The planning system for the new hospital plan comprises a total of 64 medical performance groups, which are organized in 53 circles and 16 supply areas. One goal is to improve the accessibility of the houses: 90% of the citizens of North Rhine -Westphalia should be able to achieve a hospital with offers in "general interior" and "general surgery" within 20 minutes by car.
| endoprosthetics knee | 136 | minus 36% |
| endoprosthetics hip | 137 | minus 42% |
| Treatment of liver cancer | 29 | minus 74% |
| Treatment of esophageal cancer | 26 | minus 63% |
| Interventional cardiology | 141 | minus 15% |
In order to support the necessary structural changes and investments, the state government of North Rhine-Westphalia provides around 2.5 billion euros. As early as December 2024, the first funding notices of over 409 million euros were spent on eight hospitals. The aim of the new plan is not only to improve the quality of inpatient care, but also to ensure high -quality and needs -based hospital care.
The entire process of hospital planning took about six years and was carried out in close cooperation with relevant players in the hospital landscape. The implementation of the plan, combined with the challenges by the complaints, will be decisive for the future of hospital care in North Rhine-Westphalia in the coming months. Further information on the new hospital planning can be found on the website of the Ministry of Health.
For detailed data about the hospital plan in NRW, we refer to the reports of Mags.nrw and DetailsQuellen