AfD on health and care

The AfD wants to equip nursing homes, retirement homes, and hospices with digital devices. Residents should be able to stay in touch with relatives through assisted video calls, both in times of isolation and in everyday life.

People in care homes should be able to see their family by video. The homes should get devices for this. Someone helps residents with the video call. The AfD says many residents were very lonely during Covid.

The platform cites a study by the Charité hospital on the effects of visiting bans during the Covid pandemic. According to it, loneliness, confusion, and depression among residents rose sharply. The devices are also meant to ease contact with relatives who live far away.

The AfD wants to largely preserve municipal hospitals, keep them from being privatized, and fund them according to need. The state should fully meet its investment obligations and clear the investment backlog. The platform sees maintaining health facilities as a core government task.

Cities and counties run their own hospitals. The AfD wants to keep these hospitals. They should not go to private companies. The state should pay enough money for them.

The state is to fund investments in hospitals listed in the state hospital plan continuously and in full. Staffing ratios and minimum staffing levels are to be reflected in funding, and energy and renovation costs paid separately. Children's hospitals are to get their own investment budget at 1.2 times the standard budget. For municipal hospitals, the AfD calls for a collective agreement modeled on the workload-relief agreement at university hospitals. All hospitals are to test systematically for multi-resistant germs, paid for by health insurers.

The AfD wants to expand outpatient treatment and pay it better to relieve hospitals. Budgeting, the cap on fees paid to doctors' practices, is to be lifted, and the new-patient rule is to stay. It rejects insurers' clawback claims against office-based doctors.

The AfD wants to strengthen doctors' offices. Today doctors are only paid up to a limit. This limit should go. This way hospitals should have less work.

According to the platform, family doctors carry the central responsibility in outpatient care. For therapists, the AfD calls for higher pay, especially for home visits, more autonomy in treatment, university-level training, and less paperwork. In psychotherapy, control mechanisms are to prevent excessive spending. For rural care, more medical school places and scholarships for specialist training in rural areas are to be created. Foreign students are to pay tuition fees. Palliative care is to be expanded statewide in both outpatient and inpatient settings.

The AfD wants midwives paid substantially more to counter the shortage in postnatal care. Because liability insurance premiums have risen sharply, it wants to examine a state liability fund. Maternity wards in hospitals close to home should remain open.

Midwives help during and after birth. The AfD wants them to earn much more. Their insurance has become very expensive. The state may help with a fund.

According to the platform, rising insurance premiums are pushing many midwives out of obstetrics, and the supplement paid by statutory insurers does little to change that. The AfD considers a state liability fund, as proposed by professional associations, a sensible approach and wants to look into options. Better pay is meant to secure basic care for all pregnant women statewide. Maternity wards near where people live are to be kept.

The AfD calls for a thorough review of the state's COVID measures in health care and wants a parliamentary committee of inquiry for that purpose. It rejects mandatory COVID vaccination and favors individual counseling and personal choice. According to the platform, this should strengthen trust in the health system.

The AfD wants to look closely at the COVID period. A special committee in the state parliament should do this. The AfD rejects a duty to get the COVID shot. Everyone should decide for themselves.

The review is to cover the measures and methods used at state level, including the vaccination campaign, vaccine risks and side effects, and costs. The AfD supports individual counseling on risks and personal decisions. The platform calls coercive measures taken without the consent of those affected unacceptable. Fundamental rights are to apply during pandemics as well.

The AfD wants to expand telemedicine and integrate it more firmly into standard care. A funding program is to help doctors buy the technology. The platform sees it as a supplement to in-person treatment, especially in rural areas.

In telemedicine, the doctor talks to the patient by video or phone. The AfD wants more of this. Doctors should get money for the equipment. But visits to the doctor should stay.

Telemedicine is not meant to replace in-person treatment but to improve specialist, primary, and emergency care. Services such as tele-emergency doctors, electronic sick notes, and e-prescriptions are to be promoted, along with knowledge sharing in health care. A funding program is to support specialists and family doctors with devices, software, and IT-based case management. The AfD also supports an electronic living will.

The AfD wants to tackle the nursing staff shortage with better working conditions, higher pay, and targeted recruitment of qualified workers. On-call shifts lasting 24 hours in hospitals are to be abolished. Minimum staffing levels are to be observed and extended to other professions.

There are too few care workers. The AfD wants better working conditions and more pay for them. Shifts of 24 hours in hospitals should end. There should be fixed minimum numbers of staff.

The platform names staff shortages and poor working conditions as causes of a nursing crisis. All Hessian hospitals are to comply with minimum nurse staffing levels. Such minimums are also to apply to other groups such as speech therapists and physical therapists. The AfD regards 24-hour on-call duty as unreasonable for staff and a danger to patients.

The AfD wants stronger public support for sports and exercise and calls for a statewide sports initiative. A state program is to address effects of the COVID period such as lack of exercise among children and teens. At the same time, health insurers are to be relieved of general prevention costs and personal responsibility strengthened.

The AfD wants to promote more sports and exercise. Many children moved too little during COVID. A state program should help them. Sports should also matter more in school.

The state program is to be called 'Kondition und Koordination' (fitness and coordination) and is aimed mainly at children and teens. Prevention and sports are to get more room in the training of childcare workers and teachers and in the curriculum. The teacher-coach program in Hesse is to be expanded. The AfD also demands a clear sports policy concept. It justifies this with rising health costs due to demographics and medical progress.