Vienna creates space for Covid patients in hospitals: operations postponed – Coronavirus Vienna

The situation in Austrian hospitals is getting worse. After Upper Austria was the first federal state to announce Tuesday that it would postpone planned interventions, there are similar plans in Vienna.

“In the coming days” is to start postponing elective interventions, as Health Councilor Peter Hacker (SPÖ) said on Wednesday in the “morning newspaper” Ö1. This is to create space for the care of crown patients. Acute attention is not reduced.

“Right now we do not have 80 Covid-19 patients in intensive care units and in the next few days we will begin to reduce, postpone and postpone elective interventions,” Hacker said in the “Morgenjournal”. Elective interventions are interventions that can be planned, for example knee or hip operations or cataract interventions.

Some of these operations are already being outsourced to private hospitals as part of a cooperation between the Vienna Health Association and private hospitals and religious orders, as explained by a spokesman for the APA Health Councilor. However, in the near future, the actual number of operations should start to decline. To what extent, the rapporteur could not say: “That depends on the development of the number of infections”.

The Vienna Health Association works with religious hospitals and private hospitals to ensure the care of coronavirus patients while maintaining normal operations for as long as possible. In addition to city hospitals, religious hospitals also care for Covid-19 patients. Private hospitals perform elective interventions. The postponement of predictable and non-urgent operations should only occur when the number of cases is very high, according to the presentation of the cooperation in early October.

“We are in a good position to have established a good cooperation with the private hospitals in Vienna, which can already take away many patients in addition to the ones we treat in our own hospitals, but as I said, in a few days we will start to change. we are still far from the critical size. The critical size depends on the development in the next two weeks, “said Councilor Hacker in the” Morgenjournal. “

Critical keyword size: According to the Hackers spokesperson, in Vienna there are around 1,000 normal beds available for the care of corona patients. There is also a contingent of a maximum of 320 intensive care beds.

In any case, acute care is not being reduced in hospitals. Of course, it could not be the case that one should cut back on very vital treatments, “if it is oncology, if they are stroke patients and other things,” emphasized the city council.

The Austrian Medical Association (ÖÄK) thinks little about the postponement of non-vital operations due to the increase in Covid cases in Austrian hospitals. Some interventions improve the quality of life and would save workers, Vice President Harald Mayer argued at a news conference Wednesday. However, what threatens the corona pandemic is a personnel problem.

“We have a very good healthcare system in Austria,” Mayer said, possibly even the best in relation to the pandemic. But “I’m afraid we have a personnel problem first before we have a machine problem.” Highly specialized intensive care physicians could disappear before ventilators, for example. Planned operations, on the other hand, weren’t a problem, with some arriving early in the morning and going home at night.

Mayer sees doctors well equipped with protective equipment against infections. This could never be good enough, “but at the moment we don’t have a problem,” but this could change relatively quickly, he stressed. During the first wave in Europe, for example, you did not learn not to buy everything in China. “That can also hit us on the head,” warned ÖÄK’s vice president. He stressed that there was enough protective gear at this time.

The Medical Association also sees a resource problem regardless of the corona pandemic, that is, in training. A survey of young doctors showed that there is much to do, especially in training. Although 38 percent were satisfied or very satisfied with the status quo, another 36 percent only rated the medical training as “satisfactory.” Just as many young doctors would even be willing to go to another country if the training there were better, reported Daniel von Langen and Christoph Steinacker, of the doctors employed by the Federal Curia.

This result is clearly not enough for Mayer. In this case, a “satisfactory” should be rated as “clearly insufficient”. Doctors do not have to become good secretaries, administrators or nurses, but rather “have to become doctors.” For the vice-president of ÖÄK, the poll result is also a “first-rate red flag” for politicians. This should make resources available and create a realistic personnel policy if good doctors are trained in Austria.