Digitalisierung und Investitionsfinanzierung
The baby boomers will soon retire from working life. The large “pension rush” is to be expected in the course of the 2020s and thus a growing demand for health services. At the same time, however, there is a threat of rationing on the labour market for health care professions and, as a result, for services for patients. The central task will be to provide more people in need with fewer specialists without increasing the workload of these specialists to such an extent that in the end they lose interest in health care and look for more attractive jobs in other sectors. The focus must therefore be on labour-saving technological progress. Entrepreneurial freedom is a central element in implementing medical and especially technological innovations in the health care system. The enormous challenges facing the healthcare system cannot be mastered by simply optimising the workflow and organisational structure of the individual service providers. In fact, completely new efficiency-enhancing innovations such as digitalisation of medicine, telemedicine, artificial intelligence and robotics will be necessary. Since they need time to reach market maturity, it is important to push ahead with digitisation in the healthcare sector now. Countries like Denmark can serve as role models in this respect, since digitisation plays a significant role in its hospital reform. A broad-based digitisation strategy is also needed in Germany. The authors therefore propose a “digital boost” which provides for investments in digitisation in the hospital sector by means of an investment programme of eight years. Its aim is a modern IT infrastructure and electronic networking of hospital as it already exists in many other countries.
Augurzky, B. and A. Beivers (2019), Digitalisierung und Investitionsfinanzierung. In Jürgen Klauber, Max Geraedts, Jörg Friedrich and Jürgen Wasem (Hrsg.), Krankenhaus-Report 2019 - Das digitale Krankenhaus. Heidelberg: Springer, 67-82.