Tauernklinikum: Strong criticism from the ÖGK chairman
Health
According to the state audit office, Andreas Huss, chairman of the ÖGK, is now criticizing the links between the Zeller Tauernklinikum and the Ritzensee private clinic in Saalfelden. The private clinic would be kept alive, but the hospital in Mittersill (all Pinzgau) would be massively reduced.
The Court of Audit report shows that the number of patients in the private clinic at Ritzensee in Saalfelden is increasing – the hospital is always at the limit of the surface area, while at the Tauernklinikum site in Mittersill the length of stay of patients fell sharply from 2016 to 2020, at the second site in Zell am See she stagnates. After the Court of Auditors’ criticism, Andreas Huss is now also attacking the integration of the Tauernklinikum and the Ritzensee private clinic.
“This cannot be in the public health system”
“That a private clinic is 58 percent occupied with patients from a public hospital. This means that if the patients in the public hospital, namely Zell am See, did not exist, then this private hospital would actually not be able to survive. What the Court of Auditors is rightly criticizing here IS that a private clinic IS being artificially kept alive. And that can’t be the case in the public health system,” criticizes Huss.
Private honor: “At least it looks funny”
Another big point of criticism: the medical director received fees as a private doctor in the Ritzensee sanatorium. “A hospital doctor with hospital patients, whom he actually should have treated in his job in the hospital, then treated in a private hospital and also receives an additional private fee for it – at least that looks funny,” says Huss.
The Tauernklinikum management replies: The said primary was also the medical director in the private clinic and was paid accordingly.
What do the auditors criticize?
Tax money as cross-financing for a well-running private clinic – that is the core of the harsh criticism that the State Audit Office is leveling at Tauernklinikum Zell am See-Mittersill (Pinzgau). Patients of the general class from Zell were operated on by doctors at the Ritzensee private clinic in Saalfelden for private fees – more on this in salzburg.ORF.at (12/16/2022)