The Vienna health system is facing enormous upheaval – and not just because of the enormous progress in medicine. It is also about demographic developments, i.e. increasing life expectancy, and thus the greater need for care and geriatric medicine. In addition, in the future there will also be rising costs in the healthcare system, while the focus for patients will be on long waiting times for an appointment with a specialist, in a hospital outpatient clinic and for planned operations.
This leads to the question: Where is the Vienna health system developing? The answer is provided by the “Regional Structural Plan for Health Vienna 2030”, which is intended to reorganize the city’s health system over the next five years. “It’s about nothing other than the city’s entire health care system,” summed up SPÖ City Councilor for Health Peter Hacker when presenting the paper, which he presented with the pink health spokeswoman Jung Hu and Agnes Streissler-Führer, chairwoman of the ÖGK’s state agency committee. This future plan is coordinated with the federal government and the social insurance companies. “The press” looked at the key points.
The focus is on expanding outpatient and day hospital treatment for patients. After some procedures, they no longer have to spend the night in the hospital – which suits patients and the city of Vienna. The latter can reduce expensive beds that have become unnecessary through outpatient care, which can then be used for what they are intended for: for serious cases.
There will be 169 regional health centers by 2030 – they are intended to ensure basic care in Vienna. These include 80 new primary care centers (PVZ) with long opening hours. In the future there should be at least one in every district.
Basic care also includes new health centers (GZ), which are always dedicated to a medical focus: nine of them will offer gynecological services and alleviate the lack of statutory health clinics in the field of gynecology. The number of centers for pediatric and adolescent medicine will be increased from eleven to 14. What parents will be happy about is that six of these centers will be open on weekends and public holidays.
A new pacemaker and thyroid center is being built, and a center for outpatient operations is also planned. Small surgical procedures such as the removal of metal plates and nails after fractures are to be carried out there. This relieves the burden on the high-tech operating rooms in hospitals, which are oversized for such operations. This center is intended to reduce the sometimes long waiting times for planned operations. The exact locations of the different projects have not yet been announced.
One problem area in Vienna is child and adolescent psychiatry. By 2030, 49 such positions are expected to remedy the glaring lack of supply in this area.
There is also good news for people with chronic pain and diabetes. Over the next five years, the number of diabetes centers will increase from one to three. Anyone suffering from chronic pain will be able to turn to four centers by 2030 – there are currently two.
In the future, there will be a center for post-acute infectious syndromes for people who suffer from Long Covid, the severe multisystem disease ME/CFS and similar illnesses.
In order to advance outpatient care and day hospital interventions that benefit patients and the healthcare system, capacities in this area are being massively increased. This has the effect that the number of expensive beds in the hospitals of the city of Vienna, and also in the organizations whose beds Vienna uses (e.g. religious hospitals) can be reduced by 800 beds by 2030. Vienna will then have a total of 8,400 inpatient beds. More beds than before can be made available for disciplines with growing needs. This affects the areas of neurology, psychiatry, special care, pediatrics and child/adolescent psychiatry.
Due to the aging population, there will also be 500 additional beds in acute geriatrics and remobilization by 2030. There are currently 884 such beds.
