In a Twitter post, a Marburg doctor complained about the indifferent treatment and the dramatic situation in the healthcare system. Dana Maresa warns that before the fall, Germany would be heading “directly towards a catastrophe”. She makes several demands on politicians.
The Robert Koch Institute currently records tens of thousands of corona infections every day. The seven-day incidence is more than 400. Leading scientists and politicians are warning of a dramatic situation as autumn approaches. The health system is already under pressure, but this is accepted with a “shrug”, a doctor from Giessen said on Twitter. In several posts, Dana Maresa, a doctor at the University Hospital in Marburg, uses the hashtags “Medicine is burning” and “If I’m sick, you might die” to explain how the health staff and the intensive care units are already at their limit.
“Medicine has experienced an even greater burden from this pandemic, although it was already problematic,” writes Maresa. The shortage of skilled workers continues to worsen, and this is also noticeable now in the pandemic: there are often no doctors for the emergency doctor service, no free beds in intensive care and normal wards, full emergency rooms, canceled operations. The problems are already massive, but Germany would nevertheless “steer full speed ahead, despite an iceberg in sight, simply without detours into the impending catastrophe,” said Maresa.
Maresa also criticizes that more and more health workers continue to work despite infection to care for patients. “Own health obviously doesn’t matter either! Cool, thanks,” writes the doctor. Maresa also complains that the general population is no longer required to wear masks, but nurses are. She also comments on the views of Corona deniers: disinformation and hate speech are allowed everywhere and people are spreading their non-scientific opinions.
She makes concrete demands on politicians: fairer pay, more work compensation, fewer services and better working hours. More study places for medicine would have to be created and the studies optimized. In addition, university clinics would have to be nationalized. So that hospitals are relieved, specialists and psychologists should also get more seats in the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians.
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She also demands that the DRG system should be improved or even abolished. Treatments in German hospitals have been billed for around 17 years using the DRG flat-rate per case. Scientists are already calling for the system to be abolished, which is often criticized for having pushed a wave of privatization and understaffing in care. Maresa also proposes establishing fewer health insurance companies in order to save money that could be used for medicine. She says: “Inadequate care always costs us more in the end!”
