Better hospital treatment could stop 1000s of deaths in Germany: Study

A recent study has suggested that thousands of deaths in German hospitals could be avoided if better treatment was offered to patients.

The study, released on Thursday by a government commission in Berlin, found that a considerable number of patients die every year in hospitals because the treatment they received was not up to par with the highest standards.

For example for stroke patients, according to the study, it makes a clear difference which hospital they are admitted to: In clinics with a specialized stroke center, 23.9 percent of the patients died within one year after the stroke. In clinics without such a center, it was 30.4 percent. Only about a quarter of German hospitals have such a stroke unit.

For breast cancer patients, the study showed a virtually 25 percent higher survival rate if the initial treatment was carried out in a specialized center.

The study put the number of preventable deaths in German hospitals from strokes alone at around 5,000 per year.

Tom Bschor, who led the study, said the analysis showed German hospitals were not able to offer treatment to patients at the highest level. He suggested a “concentration of treatments in experienced clinics in order to offer comprehensive and close-meshed excellent care.”

“[I]n the current system, cancer and stroke patients are dying earlier than necessary because too many hospitals are performing these treatments.”

The current situation, in which clinics can often provide all services, leads to "quality deficits, increased morbidity and mortality, but also to comparatively high costs," the study found.

The findings of the research team pointed to an urgent need for reform in the current caring system, confirming a plan set forth by the federal government to establish more specialized clinics across the country.

"The hospital reform will save tens of thousands of lives a year," said Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach in Berlin.

Lauterbach, with the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), sees the findings in the study as confirmation of his plan to focus more on specialized clinics run by highly-qualified doctors.

"Quality saves lives." In the future, complicated interventions should "only be carried out in specialized clinics and by very well qualified doctors," Lauterbach said. "Not every house has to offer every medical treatment."

Many German hospitals are in the red, and by implementing a fundamentally new financing system for the specialized clinics Lauterbach wants to improve medical quality. He also wants to make the performance record of each individual clinic in the treatment of certain diseases accessible to the public to give them better choices.

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