German hospitals warn employee salaries at risk as they face coronavirus cash crunch

A patient in the intensive care unit in Havelhoehe community hospital in Berlin

Credit: Fabrizio Bensch/REUTERS

German hospitals and clinics have warned they may be unable to pay employees in the first quarter of 2021 as coronavirus-related restrictions wreak havoc with their finances.

The German Hospital Society (DKG) warned on Tuesday that government aid is urgently required to ensure liquidity in the sector, with two-thirds of clinics expected to make a loss in 2020.

Medical facilities across the country have been forced to cancel a range of inpatient and outpatient procedures while wards — including those for surgery — have been converted into intensive care units for coronavirus patients.

Financial losses have been caused by a “reluctance among patients to plan operations, (the implementation of) necessary protective measures and increased hygiene requirements, along with increasing capacities for corona patients in the intensive care units,” DKG said in a statement.

An estimated 1.2 million people – including more than 185,000 doctors and 400,000 nurses – are employed in German hospitals and clinics.

"If the federal government does not significantly increase aid, nationwide clinics will no longer be able to pay their employees’ salaries in the first quarter of 2021," said the president of the Hospital Society, Gerald Gass, in an interview with the German Editorial Network on Tuesday.

“The money from standard hospital care operations is missing.”

According to the DKG, hospital revenues have halved due to the pandemic, falling from €6 billion (£5.45 billion) in 2019 to €3 billion (£2.72 billion) in 2020.

Germany provided a new rescue package for hospitals in December that compensated those who deferred surgeries and boosted intensive care capacity.

However, Mr Gass said only 25 per cent of clinics qualified for this support and called upon the government to pay the equivalent monthly revenue based on 2019 figures to ensure hospitals remained operational.

“Hospitals are facing an uncertain future. We fear that the developments from the first wave will continue to intensify during the second wave,” Mr Gass said.

Germany recorded 852 new coronavirus deaths in the 24 hours to Tuesday, one of the highest daily totals since the pandemic began.

While only 12,892 new cases were recorded in the same period — a lower daily figure than that which was recorded in previous weeks — officials have warned the amount is likely due to the lower numbers of tests being carried out during the festive period. 

Among the pressures facing medical facilities is a new, more infectious strain of the coronavirus. It has emerged that the mutation first highlighted by Britain – an announcement that closed borders across Europe and the world just before Christmas – was detected in Germany as far back as November.

The Hanover Medical School said on Tuesday that the variant was retrospectively detected in a sample from a patient who died from the virus in November.

According to the German ministry of health, the deceased person’s daughter was in the south of England in mid-November and was probably infected there before bringing the virus variant home.