Blue Fall Campaign

FPÖ Wants Private Clinics Instead of Hospital Outpatient Departments

Manfred Haimbuchner presented the first part of the new FPÖ poster campaign.(Bild: FOTOKERSCHI / WERNER KERSCHBAUMMAYR)

The FPÖ is kicking off the fall with a poster campaign and presenting its first campaign issue: the party is calling for hospital outpatient clinics to be converted into private medical practices. This would ease the strain on the state budget, the party argues, because private medical practices are the responsibility of social insurance providers, not the state.

A broadly smiling state FPÖ leader and the slogan “Our homeland needs a stance”: Deputy Governor Manfred Haimbuchner presented the first part of the blue fall poster campaign on Thursday in Linz.

The corresponding posters have been up in Upper Austria for several days. Three “concrete concepts from different policy areas” are to be unveiled in the coming weeks. The series kicked off with the topic of medical care and health. At 1.72 billion euros, this sector accounts for the largest share of the state budget, which totals 10 billion euros. Demographic trends and advances in medical technology will continue to drive up costs, but so will “unwanted developments,” says Haimbuchner.

Hospitals Are Not a “Central Point of Entry”
Expensive hospitals have become the “central entry point” for all patients. To achieve better control, the FPÖ proposes replacing hospital outpatient clinics with primary care practices. The private practice physician would then decide on further medical care. To ensure patients incur no additional costs, the state would have to cover the copayment for the chosen physician, according to Haimbuchner: “The state would save costs by having social insurance fulfill its mandated obligations.”

“Nursing-Only Wards”
Furthermore, Haimbuchner suggests that the family physician emergency service should be housed in these facilities at night, when the primary care practices are closed. These resources should be made available to the family physician emergency service. To cut costs on expensive hospital stays, the discharge process should also be restructured. Patients who no longer require acute care but cannot be discharged for some reason should be transferred to “nursing-only wards.” No cost-intensive acute medical care takes place there.