What Medical Services Are Offered To Visitors In Berlin, Germany?

Having worked in German hospitals for more than 15 years, i can tell you that every government promised to improve conditions in our health sector. Yet everything gets worse year after year. A lack of healthcare professionals that earn a fraction of those in neighbouring countries while having the worst patient to employee ratio. This crisis is a consequence of decade-long cynical political mismanagement.

I worked in US hospitals for more than 40 years. I remember when DRG’s were introduced–many hospital managers panicked and cut back training programs. Most hospitals made more money with DRG’s than with the former fee-for-service system, but they didn’t restore the medical personnel training programs they had cut, and in time they were faced with severe personnel shortages, which in turn moved people to retire sooner than they probably would have before.

I have recently came to Germany and was pregnant and during my 3rd trimester i got some kidney issues also, there was alot of complications in the end as my water broke early and the risk of getting infection was high, but the doctors and nurses really really took a great care of me and i will be always thankful to them, reading the comments of other nurses who have faced aggression i am really sorry on behalf of everyone because you guys are really angels on this earth working day and night taking care of people in pain and in need, lastly i will he really thankful to Germany’s hospital RKH in Ludwigsburg who saved me and my babies life.

If you live in one of the richest countries in the world, with the highest taxes in the world and still got to a point where you have catastrophic conditions in the areas of health care, education, digitization, pensions, then you know that money has lost its ability to drive innovation and also lost his ability as a preserver of prosperity

I so agree a new start is needed. I was a critical care nurse here in the USA for 40 years. For the first 2/3 of my career i was proud of what excellent care we provided. I worked in post surgical cardio-thoracic area. Now, they want everything regionalized (to save money) and everything has to be the same everywhere even if the patient population and patient problems differ. The system has been dumbed-down, and I am no longer proud of the care provided. Our voices used to matter, and we could effect changes and better patient outcomes. No longer! Now you are treated like another cog in the wheel. All professional respect is gone. The newer nurses buy into the new system because they know nothing else. It is the almighty dollar that reigns.

Similar situation here in Canada. People constantly disrespect nurses and doctors these days, also their salaries aren’t going up so why would anyone want to stay in these working conditions. Let’s not forget how much school and training is required for them to make it, and politicians always cutting healthcare, its no wonder health care is in trouble.

I had a child in Germany (West Germany at the time) 35 years ago and my mom, a maternal and infant nurse in the US, came to be with me at the end of the pregnancy and for several weeks afterwards. She was so impressed with the way everything was done that she couldn’t stop talking about it. She still goes on about it when any mention of Germany comes up in conversation. It’s so upsetting to think the system is troubled now. It was first class.

As a nurse as well, these problems seem to sadly be echoed through many parts of the world. I’ve heard colleagues from California to Korea to Canada to the UK all share similar grievances and stressors. It’s hard being understaffed, and dealing with aggressive or violent patients. Many healthcare providers are told this is how it is, and it sucks, but that’s life, but there has to be change to keep people in the field. Burn out is so apparent if you work in the field.

As a foreign doctor who is waiting still Medical licence in Germany from Bayern, i can tell you: There is a terrible bureaucracy. I have a residency in Germany, C1 German certificate, job acceptance, my Erasmus background in German medical faculty and my chefarzt who want me to start work as soon as possible. I’ve been waiting for 6 weeks just to get an appointment for the German exam in medicine. this takes 6-12 months in most cases. The authorised department in bayern does not reply e-mails, the phones are not answered. this time German doctors are forced to work hard and then are considering resigning. Assistant doctor training is hampered by so. Germany is currently unable to use foreign doctors who want to work in its country. It keeps you waiting for months with its bureaucracy. this is just a short example. Foreign doctors who could not stand this bureaucracy and returned to their country are not few.

Here in America, it is much the same. There is a couple across the street from us. The wife is a nurse from the Phillipines – which is common. She has been working for 12 years and is feeling the same pressures. In my opinion,these issues can be traced directly to Globalism, and the practice of using just a single business model because the same people are in charge of everything, from how we deliver medicine to how we educate children and what we will be eating in ten years – for our own good. Look high enough, and there will be the same group of elites at the top, forcing everyone to live like they demand, while they enjoy so much more. This is not about saving the planet. This is about forcing it to stop spinning so they can re-start it. They believe it cannot be done with 8 Billion people alive.

Not the stress, not too much work not even the money. It’s the disrespect of some patients, some families AND above all our managers! I am sitting there telling them that people might die when they put me in a different unit leaving my colleague alone and they just scream at me that I have to do what they say. They act like we are working with things.

The story of nurses being burnt out and leaving the profession is worldwide since the pandemic. It just took a huge toll on nurses working lives. Paying them more will help, but reducing the stress is more important. In the US, they created a position called a “nursing tech”, which was basically a nurse assistant. It worked for a time, but then hospitals lost sight of their purpose and laid them off.

They will give you operations you dont need in Germany. My aunt died in German hospital care because she was forced out of her home by her state appointed guardian. They then operated on her and didn’t bother to notice that she was diabetic and needed medication for her diabetes. They let her go 2 weeks without diabetic medication which put her in a coma. Obviously you can’t sue the state hospital because the judge residing is also part of the state. Don’t get old in Germany unless you’re rich and can pay for private care.

German native here. Lived in U.K. for over 20 years. In both countries the nurses have been fantastic, loving, caring, always a smile and I felt cared. Having said that in Germany the Health system is 100% better, I was an outpatient in a “Tagesklinik”, an institution for outpatients in the phsycatric ward, in the U.K. they don’t have it; I had to go privat …. £1.5k later ….

One year ago (march 2022) Germany made a rule that unvaccinated health care workers were not allowed to work. This fact was not mentioned as a cause. What is the impact? who knows if there is no report or investigation. One thing for sure, such a law has a chilling effect on both vaccinated and unvaccinated staff. How would anyone want to invest their career in such a climate.

People are commenting from all around the world, and the general consensus seems to be that both public & private healthcare systems of every kind are high stress, over worked, over utilized and struggling with finances & retaining staff. Sounds like the sheer volume of demand is at the root of all these symptoms, so the underlying population demographics have a lot to do with these problems. Whether an aging population bubble or large numbers of working poor, delivering services to all who need it has become extremely challenging. Delivering quality care to huge numbers of patients requires a mountain of resources and round the clock attention. Nobody seems to have created a model that could be universal and scale to rising demand. Plenty of room for improvement everywhere, but tons of constraints that preclude making systemic changes. It is what it is…

I’m by no means an expert, but it seems fairly obvious to me that shifting money around alone won’t fix this. To retain the existing staff you need to pay them better in general and overwork them less, thus you need more money and more staff, which also costs money. To get more staff you need to invest in education, ease immiagration of healthcare workers and students, who again also will likely also need financial assistance.

There is a huge lack in personal but the companies wouldn’t hire because then they need to pay more (salaries), specifically the resident medical doctors. Furthermore for the Doctors coming abroad; the amount of Exams and all paperwork which all consume time and effort to get the final license. Is beyond imagine!

In south africa we also have 2 different health sectors private and public. 80% of the doctors choose to have there own private practice and work from private hospitals. Which leaves public health in a mess, 1 dr has to see to hundreds of patients daily they totally overworked. Even the nurses prefer to work in private hospitals like netcare, cos if you work 15 days a month in a private hospital u get paid more than nurses in public hospitals.

Same month our local newspaper reported “health insurance company is making record profits and managers are getting bonuses” came a letter ” we have higher costs due rona so you have to pay us more insurance” – The only reliable way to increase profits for them is deny services to save costs and demand more money so this is exactly whats been going on to stuff their own pockets. Hospitals got reduced funding for the same cause. Im still fine being younger and healthy but i observed older people fighting insurance to get treatment for years where they got nothing but paperwork why they couldn’t get their treatment. In one case old man didnt get his cane til he died – So insurance successfully averted paying a bunch of bucks to help granpa after he paid decades into insurance. And government made it law to pay “social health care” so you can’t exit even if you know they are scamming you. What the press reports as “germany is low on corruption” really means is “its all legal cause we passed it into law”.

Germany needs to loosen up the whole Anerkennungs process (certifying of documents/licenses from other countries). So many people (including myself) who immigrate to Germany can’t work as medical personell due to our licenses not being recognized. To do this, you need to apply for certification, which requires at least B2 lvl of German knowledge certificate (even if you’re fluent), costs money. Then you need to translate all documents in Germany, not elsewhere, which costs a ton of money. Then you need to get these originals and translations approved by a notary, which guess what, also costs money. Then the application to the institution costs at least 500 euros, and you will need additional courses and practice (which is paid very little)… so you’re stuck in this cycle of working a low paid job (just so you can live here and afford rent), can’t afford to pay for the whole Anerkennung, and no institution cane give you financial aid if you’re employed (even though you earn a minimum wage). I understand you can’t employ people who might seem less certified, you do work with people and their lives might depend on you, but if you clearly have shortage of staff, then make it a bit easier for others to work. Give financial aid (with an option to pay back when you earn enough), allow people to avoid the language certificate if you can clearly see that they are fluent, and please allow them to also learn while working.

I am from Austria, living in Finland now. Back, like 10 years ago, it was already a problem in Austria. Some patient slept outside the rooms, in a hospital bed, because there wasn’t enough space. But still, the situation back then was way better than it is now. As a nurse you get treated badly, long work hours and not much salary. I have known, back in Austria, a few doctors who also left the country, because salary is higher and you’ll get more respect in other countries. But comparing middle Europe’s health care system with the Finnish one currently, Germany and Austria still wins. During Corona, middle Europe lost a lot of nurses and doctors unfortunately. But what they said in the beginning, that they are close that children die because they don’t have enough staff and/or medication, is something that struggles Finland since a long time. And I’m quite sure that actually whole Europe is suffering from this. Still, Germany, as well as Austria, still do a good job in their health care system, even if it looks a bit grim right now. That the topic is more about money is true, and horrible, but again, this goes for whole Europe. Often it happens, when you get pregnant, the doctor will ask you a few times, if you want to have a C section, this is mainly because they try to make money with you. On this point I want to say, if it is not necessary, don’t get a C section, don’t let the doctor talk into it, unless you really want one. And, back in Austria, I still remember that a doctor told me, he is awake now for 40 hours, but he still needs to operate me.

I respect Lauterbach for admitting to the system, which he in no small part formed, being broken and trying to change it. However, he still hasn’t learned many lessons. Many have already been mentioned in the comments, I want to focus on one: Outpatient procedures are not the panacea of the healthcare system. While some niche areas might profit from them, a large part of procedures is already performed with too short hospital stays! We send patients home the day after surgery without any professional care to change the dressings and inspect the wounds. General practitioners are already at their capacity and cannot absorb the extra workload. This results in patients coming back two days later with infections or bleeding and end up staying several weeks due to sepsis, when just two more days in the hospital could have prevented it all. As a concrete example: After coronary interventions, especially with stent implants, we used to keep patients in the ICU for one night to monitor for any arrhythmia or life-threatening complications. Then they would stay another night in the normal care ward to have a look at the wound and check that the patient got on with his new medication. Nowadays, they are lucky if they get an ICU bed for the night, at times they will be transferred to normal care in the middle of the night, nobody has the time to check their medication once more and they end up going home without the anticoagulants that keep them alive with their new stent. This is life-threatening and certainly not relieving the system!

I received my nurses training in Germany, but worked in California for decades. I’ve been retired for 10 years, but remained in touch with my nurse friends in Germany and California. When I look back at my critical care career over decades one factor stands out: we kept people alive on expensive machinery and drugs. It was inhumane, such treatment, and then the patients died anyway, a few million dollars later. How many children could you have taken care of for that amount of money?! If you propose changes you’re being accused of creating “death panels”. Media like Fox will see to that. Yet our health care system is so broken it’s embarrassing. Pharmaceutical companies are making money at astronomical rates, and the poor at the other end of the spectrum have to pay for it. It’s sad to see Germany doesn’t seem to be far behind the US. Nurses are working under extreme stress, and patients and families are becoming more demanding. Nurses need combat pay these days. I loved my job. But I doubt very much I’d love it now under the current conditions. I very much sympathize with nurses, physicians, and others working in health care settings these days, no matter what country they’re working in.

Healthcare in Los Angeles collapsed after the flood of “undocumented” immigrants. The emergency rooms were filled to overcrowding with people who don’t pay anything, the delays were out of control. It was so bad the ambulances would have to wait by the side of the road until a hospital had space. Hospital staff burnout was severe. So glad I got out there, I was scared to get injured or sick there. I don’t think there is solution when everyone wants first rate care but no one wants to pay for it.

There is so much inefficiencies specially in healthcare in germany that is unbelievable. For a country that pays one of the highest taxation and invests one of the highest across the world, the state is abysmal. Compared to eastern countries where a doctor sees hundreds patients per day, compared to here seeing barely 20 a day. The enormous amounts of bureaucracy that goes in to report each patient, the enormous concentration of power in the doctors who run entire clinics as private practices without the possibility to outsourcing basic testing, and testing without need of prescription. Setting up of diagnostic centers without a stationed doctor would be perhaps the only way to tackle the rush. This followed by simply making it enormously difficult for doctors from other countries to work in germany given the insane number of legal and language requirements to start their practice even when the fact remains that appointments are available after months. Worse part, doctors also not being well versed with english and english medical literature dilutes the efficacy of diagnosis. Seems like there is no end to this in sight.

I am a teacher in Germany. I think we also have to look very critically at the role the education system plays here. My high schoolers, despite our best efforts, are not graduating with the work ethic and cognitive skills that one needs to have to take on serious medical careers. Mathematics, the sciences and a development of interpersonal social skills needs to be made a top priority in secondary schools.

About 55 or 60 years back my mother got her ureterectomy operation done in a hospital in Delhi. After a stay of four days she was discharged and reast of the treatment took place at our home. A doctor used to look her up at home and gave simple treatment. She fully recovered and lived 40 more years. Looking at the complaints here, the medical services seem far more effective then. We were only lower middle class people. What happened to all that?

Actually it is no true, Germany spends 2 times more than UK for healthcare : ) But British system has been callapsing last decade. And after weeks of wainting to visit you GP, (ach time a differen t Indian “Dr”), to spend with you 5 minutes, and while searching on Google to find about info on your symptoms ; ) Nice?! Top!

The health care in germany is worse. Whatever the problem, they just tell you to take ibuprofen. When i got covid, i had severe breathing problem . The only thing the doctors prescribed was ibuprofen. wheareas in my home country for breathelessness during covid the doctor prescribed specific covid related Medicines to my family. Whatever the problem might be, the doctors i visited prescribed only ibuprofen.

A German doctor misdiagnosed me, and that left me without the right diagnosis for years and years. He didn’t read my labs with interest, instead he was asking me about my migratory status in Germany. I feel terrible 😔 because if he would have read my labs properly and listening to symptoms, my story would have been of less pain and problems. I got the diagnosis finally after years (since 2016 until 2022). It’s a rare autoimmune disease but there was the lab, the positive antibody! He was rude and cynical.

There needs to be an entire team set up with the task of identifying pain points in the system. A programmer, a wandering statistics taker and polling person. Having data on how essential work is not compensated in the correct way. Maybe the practices need to be able to monetize differently. If long but essential procedures like operations are always disadvantaged versus looking at 100 people with eye problems for a day theres a problem of doctors being unable to set their own price

Not just doctors and nurses are suffocating. A lot of technical personnel and researchers are also fed up with the conditions. Just as an example, in the hospital that I am working, we had to stop doing MRI scans because there is no one left to run the machines. And this is one of the biggest public hospitals in the region.

I’m a nurse here in germany. The problem of lacking staff is that germany is not tolerant to universal language which is English even if they call them selves,,Internationalkrankenhaus”. Just what an Irony. If you compare it to the middle east, we worked there with English and Arabic. So you can still communicate effectively with the team and the patients. Here, even though they know how to speak English(universal language) they closed their ears on that for they hate it to be used in their country. As my colleagues usually says,,du bist in DEUTSCHLAND! Du muss nur Deutsch sprechen!!!” See my point?

german nurse here: we are short staffed to the breaking point. i am sickened hearing about all your experiences with german paperwork. my employer just brought 8 nurses from tunesia here and paid for their relocation, even helping with their “anerkennung”. my tip: write directly to employers and hospitals, we are desperate for good nurses.

I am an ex-pat and get the best healthcare (urology department mostly) in Lithuania. I am a paying customer but I always try to help and do whatever to assist the staff. Strange that so many young doctors here want to get a few years of experience in and then emigrate to more affluent countries. I guess Germany should not be where they should look. Lithuania doesn’t pay their medical staff well either and I am so sick of the Monitors blaring out the anti-corruption message 24/7. I was never asked for money here from anyone in healthcare especially since I am an American.

When Covid started, it was such a difficult and dangerous situations in the hospitals but all those doctors, nurses, and all the staffs working there I thought they are so different and so blessed having those ppl. All we can do is stay in home as possible and listen to the instructions and not spreading the diseases

In the end of 80s/beginning of 90s there was a law removed that forbid hospitals to make active revenue. Reason being the sheer cost in resources and money. A few decades later, the,Fallpauschale‘ was invented and resulted by a gremium that also included our current health minister Karl Lauterbach. Its aim simply consisted in restraining costs. However it turned out be be working more efficiently than ever planned so that hospitals got into a massive race regarding who can save the most money treating patients. The Fallpauschale depicts around 1600 cases of diseases of which each is assigned a strict and detailed amount of money, time, staff and other resources to treat it. Some operations or treatments of diseases are more lucrative to be treated than others. E.G. many knee surgeries in general or measures to keep fatally ill people alive. The cost is burdened onto society in which each individual pays their taxes to finance the system. On the other hand the recenue generated by treatments mainly goes to individual investors. Its become a dire system in which alloarties deny their faults and blame others. A big isse in this context are correspondi g recent policies especially the migration policy.

‘worker shortage’ is also an excuse for inefficient processes. Old school companies also tend to say that. The solution is digitalization. When you waste doctors and nurses time with manual documentation tasks etc. calling for immigrant staff is not a solution. You need to enable them to be able to take care of more patients with less unnecessary effort.

Resident physician salaries are atrocious, and these are future physicians, caring for 15-30 patients at a time, told to “be more efficient” with time. Write notes, update families, put in orders, send referrals, send prescriptions, diagnose, treat, respond quickly to clinical changes. In primary care, see a new patient every 15 minutes. They haven’t seen a doctor in 20 years? 15 minutes to get a history, do a physical exam, write a note, put in orders, give guidance. It was love for the profession that kept physicians in this broken system. COVID just burnt enough out to finally start leaving 80 hour weeks and actually start enjoy their lives/families.

Same in Canada, the health system is going through a crisis. What I can tell you as a user of the system is that health care professionals are not doing a great job, maybe because they would like higher salaries like their American counterparts. Management is also a mess and patients behaviour is part of the problem, for any minor symptom they run to Emergencies services instead of going to family clinics then the Emergency Rooms turn out to be overwhelmed. Everything is upside down.

Also, there is an inordinate amount of bad health care and bad doctors due to the health insurance companies refusing to allow doctors to compete, there are only allowed a certain amount in any given area, therefore bad doctors stick around when if they were practicing somewhere else, like America, they’d be out of business in a matter of months due to bad reviews and being out competed by actually good doctors who do a good job and know what they are doing. Here in Germany, we are stuck with horrible doctors who are indifferent, unqualified, or downright abusive, just so that the health insurance companies can have it their way. It’s sick.

Healthcare should never be a for-profit paradigm. There isn’t a single example of this anywhere in the world that does anything other than harm quality of care, deprive patients, and burn out practitioners. When will the world stop allowing the egregious profiteering that’s destroying every domain of human life?

Say what you will about affordability in certain parts of the American healthcare system. We have the best quality of care, greatest treatment availability(for rare illnesses and such), our medical professionals are some of the highest paid in the world (guaranteeing a stable supply of them), and all of the research and development for new treatments and drugs is done in the states… That’s not nothing