Kreisklinik Groß-Gerau is seeking around €1.7 million in damages from the Federal Republic of Germany for 2023 – the Darmstadt Regional Court will hear oral argument on this claim for the first time on Wednesday, 28 October, as medconweb.de reports. The clinic sees the current remuneration rules as a breach of statutory and European law obligations.
The claim was filed in March 2024 and is directed against the Federal Republic. The hospital is represented by its managing director, Prof. Dr Erika Raab. In her argument, hospitals cannot adequately refinance collective-agreement-related additional staff costs and rising material and energy costs through the existing remuneration mechanisms. The hospital relies, among other things, on European law principles on the financing of services of general economic interest.
Raab took over the management of the Kreisklinikum in Groß-Gerau, Hesse, in 2019. One of her first tasks was to lead the heavily indebted 220-bed hospital into insolvency following a resolution by the supervisory board and then to start again from scratch, as the Süddeutsche Zeitung writes. She calculated how the clinic would have to be restructured, how many staff and beds would be permissible for the operation to be profitable – with the result that this goal could not be achieved under the current laws.
Whether the funding shortfalls asserted actually give rise to a state liability claim for damages has not yet been decided by a court. According to medconweb.de, a ruling does not have to be handed down on the first day of the hearing.
The hearing is being accompanied by the Bündnis Klinikrettung. An online press conference is announced for Tuesday, 27 October, 10.00 to 10.45 a.m., at which, alongside Raab, the physician and author Dr Thomas Strohschneider will take part; the legal background to the claim, the economic consequences of the DRG flat-rate payment system and possible consequences for hospital care are to be presented. On Wednesday, from 12.00 noon, the alliance intends to hand over to representatives of the Federal Ministry of Health signatures from a petition for adequate hospital funding and the abolition of the DRG flat-rate payments in front of the Darmstadt Regional Court. The demand for abolition of the DRG system is a political position of the alliance; the immediate subject of the claim is the damages claim for what the clinic regards as unlawfully insufficient funding.
