Health alert

Medical Association: Crisis summit necessary due to budget shortfall

Medical Association calls for crisis summit due to ÖGK budget shortfall - immediate measures to safeguard care.(Bild: APA/HELMUT FOHRINGER / APA / picturedesk.com)

The Austrian Medical Association (ÖÄK) is alarmed at the more than 900 million euro gap in the Austrian Health Insurance Fund's budget for 2025.

 "The fund, as an important pillar of healthcare, continues to wobble", stated ÖÄK President Johannes Steinhart in a press release on Saturday. The professional association is calling for a crisis summit.

According to Steinhart, the immediate measures that need to be implemented now are sustainable increases in efficiency, securing funding and implementing the standardized catalog of services. The latter should have been presented by the Medical Association long ago. Steinhart emphasized that those responsible have a duty to sustainably strengthen the solidarity-based healthcare system: "We are committed to a system that offers every patient the best possible care - this commitment must also come from politicians, in the form of concrete measures."

Crisis summit called for
"A country like Austria can and must afford to make healthcare one of the core tasks of the federal government," says Edgar Wutscher, Vice President of the Austrian Medical Association and Chairman of the Federal Association of General Practitioners. The problems are becoming more acute in all federal states, and in some the ÖGK is non-existent as a negotiating partner. A crisis summit with all health policy representatives is therefore urgently needed. "It would be an indictment of a rich country like Austria if the solidarity-based health insurance system were to be ruined," says Wutscher.

Healthcare is also an "absolute priority" for Ludwig
Healthcare is also an "absolute priority" for the Mayor of Vienna, Michael Ludwig (SPÖ). For this reason, a package for the modernization of hospitals by 2030 was agreed in Vienna at the beginning of the year and an investment budget of 3.3 billion euros was earmarked for this.

The next federal government must also put healthcare at the top of its list of priorities. "Now is the time for all those responsible to pull together to solve the major challenges in the healthcare sector," emphasized Ludwig, who "absolutely" supports the demands of the Medical Association.