Highly explosive situation

Lower Austrian clinics as a powder keg: the fuse is already burning…

Who is to blame for the shortage of doctors in the provincial hospitals? The ÖVP believes it knows.(Bild: stock.adobe.com)

There will be an exchange of blows over the provincial health agency (LGA) in the provincial parliament on Thursday afternoon. The parties are already at each other's throats in advance in the "Krone" newspaper. It's about a shortage of doctors, duplicity, bloated administration - and a black hole.  

"You have to ask yourself whether it wouldn't be better to dissolve the state health agency." This statement by SPÖ party chairman Hannes Weninger hit like a bomb. Especially in the St. Pölten state party headquarters of the ÖVP.

"Populism and duplicity"
There, the idea is seen as a "blow to the agency's employees" and a "miserable attempt at populism" that "misses the reality of people's lives". ÖVP health spokesman Franz Dinhobl accuses the comrades of duplicity because they once agreed to the founding of the Provincial Health Agency (LGA).

Who is to blame for the shortage of doctors?
The LGA is not to blame for the shortage of doctors, which is leading to the closure and reduction of hospital departments, the ranks of the People's Party are convinced. On the contrary: it is being made difficult for those responsible to attract qualified staff to Lower Austria because the SPÖ is "badmouthing the healthcare system with false statements".

The Provincial Health Agency is subject to the Provincial Court of Audit, which is an organ of the Provincial Parliament. This means that it can be monitored by the provincial parliament at any time.

Franz Dinhobl, Gesundheitssprecher der ÖVP im Landtag

Like a black hole ...
Criticism has also come from the Neos party. The LGA was "designed by the ÖVP as a black hole" from which "no information gets out", explains the pink health spokesperson Edith Kollermann. Her Green counterpart Silvia Moser misses "proper planning for the clinics" and calls for a reduction in the "unnecessarily bloated administrative apparatus".

Soft and cuddly Freedom Party
The Freedom Party, which was still a vocal critic of the state health agency during the coronavirus pandemic, is now demonstrating coalition rationale: the SPÖ's criticism is probably based on a "lack of understanding of the actual circumstances". In addition, the dissolution of the LGA would "only cause additional costs".