AfD on health and care

The AfD wants to secure outpatient care, especially in structurally weak regions. It would lift the budget caps on doctors' practices and, where needed, set up municipal health centers with salaried doctors. The party still regards self-employed doctors, dentists and pharmacists as the backbone of care.

The AfD wants more doctors in rural areas. Doctors' offices should no longer have a budget cap. A budget cap means the office only gets a limited amount of money. Where doctors are missing, towns should run their own health centers. The AfD also wants to support mobile doctors' offices.

Where needed, municipal medical care centers or modern polyclinics with salaried doctors would be set up; centers run by investors from outside the health sector are ruled out. Financial and infrastructure conditions for vacant rural practices would be improved. Practice assistants, community nurses and mobile practices are meant to relieve doctors, as is less paperwork. Foreign doctors are welcome according to the platform, but must prove good German skills, a qualification equal to the EU standard, and complete a mandatory medical-association course on the German health system.

The AfD wants to train significantly more doctors at Saxon universities to counter the shortage of physicians. The Numerus Clausus (grade-based admission cutoff) would be dropped as the selection criterion, and the rural doctor quota would be expanded.

The AfD wants more places to study medicine in Saxony. School grades should no longer decide who gets a place. More places should go to future rural doctors. This is how the AfD wants to reduce the shortage of doctors.

Funding for the extra places would come in part from cuts to degree programs that, in the party's view, offer no career prospects or do not teach independent science. The grade cutoff would be replaced by a procedure better suited to the demands of the profession. The funding program for medical studies in Pécs, Hungary, would continue and be extended to other specialist groups and, if needed, to dentists and pharmacists. Parents who pay for medical studies abroad would get more tax relief. Clinical clerkships and internships outside the big cities would be better organized and funded.

The AfD wants to make sure emergency services meet the response times set by law. Rescue stations would be spread out more widely and given more staff and equipment.

Ambulances should reach patients fast enough. The law sets fixed times for this. The AfD wants more rescue stations in more places. They should get more staff and better equipment.

Emergency services and the on-call service of panel doctors would work together more closely, for example through linked emergency numbers and clearer responsibilities. Rescue services would also be tied in more closely with fire departments and municipalities to save resources and cut paperwork. Triage of patients by urgency would be improved. Dispatchers, paramedics and experienced rescue assistants would get more professional authority, for which the party seeks changes in federal law. Hospital emergency rooms would be expanded as needed and not closed because of the tiered emergency care system.

The AfD wants to advance telemedicine statewide and use financial incentives to promote the IT equipment it requires. Telemedicine is not meant to replace doctor visits in general, but to improve care in nursing homes and on-call services, for example.

The AfD wants more telemedicine. Telemedicine means doctor and patient talk by video. Doctors' offices and hospitals need good computer systems for this. The AfD wants to support that with money. Phone and paper should still stay available.

Software used by all health care providers should be compatible. The party wants to suspend penalty payments for practices and hospitals with incomplete IT until the state adequately co-funds the changeover. Important analog procedures such as booking appointments by phone would be kept, as protection against IT attacks and out of consideration for older people. Pilot projects would create telemedicine clinics, for example attached to pharmacies, where trained non-physician staff assist with video consultations.

The AfD wants to completely abolish hospital billing by flat rates per case (the DRG system), which in its view puts economics ahead of people. At the same time, basic and emergency care would be preserved throughout Saxony, and the investment backlog would be cleared with a statutory minimum investment rate of 6 percent.

Hospitals today get fixed amounts for each case they treat. The AfD wants to end this system completely. Basic care and emergency care should exist everywhere in Saxony. Hospitals should get much more money for investments. A law should set a minimum share of 6 percent for this.

How easily basic and emergency care can be reached would become a binding criterion in hospital planning. The mix of public, church-run and private operators would be preserved; operators would have to disclose profits and losses at least once a year, and administrative spending, especially at public hospitals, would be capped. The Medical Service would focus on monitoring quality rather than helping insurers cut costs. Highly specialized treatments would be reserved for university hospitals and maximum-care facilities. Rehab facilities would be modernized and better staffed.

The AfD wants Saxony to cover the investment costs of nursing care facilities and calls for a tax-funded subsidy to long-term care insurance. According to the platform, this would allow the share paid by people in need of care to be capped at 400 euros.

Care in a nursing home costs people more and more of their own money. The AfD wants to change that. Saxony should pay the investment costs of the homes. Care insurance should get money from taxes. Then people in care would only pay 400 euros themselves.

The platform justifies the demand with sharply increased out-of-pocket costs that push more and more people in care to the welfare office. The capped share would cover care costs, investment costs and training levies. The tax subsidy would follow the model of statutory health insurance. The party also wants to keep a balanced mix of public, nonprofit and private care providers and have their profits and losses disclosed.

The AfD wants to strengthen care at home and, following Bavaria's example, introduce a Landespflegegeld (state care allowance) of up to 400 euros a month from care level 2. It points out that most people in need of care want to stay in their own homes as long as possible.

Many people get care at home, often from relatives. The AfD wants to support this more. Saxony should pay its own care allowance. It should be up to 400 euros a month. People get it from care level 2.

In addition to the new state payment, outpatient care services would be strengthened. The care allowance for home care would be brought largely in line with the in-kind benefits for outpatient services. As a precondition, the platform names effective checks of the care situation in households. According to the platform, more than 70 percent of people in need of care are looked after at home.

The AfD wants to ease the burden on nursing staff with binding staffing rules, shorter working hours and pay brought into line nationwide. It also backs bringing back a mandatory service to society.

Nursing staff have a very heavy workload. The AfD wants fixed rules on how many staff there must be. Working hours should go down. Pay should be similar across Germany. The AfD also wants a mandatory service to society again.

In the short term, return bonuses for trained nurses and a five-day week are meant to help; counties would provide staffing pools and floaters. For children of care and medical workers, the state would support shared childcare with suitable opening hours. Quality criteria would be revised, inspections made more frequent and supplemented by mobile inspection teams, and key results of nursing home oversight published. Training would again focus more on practical skills, which the party says were lost with the generalist nursing training.

The AfD wants a state parliament inquiry committee to examine the state government's COVID measures. People who suffered health damage after a COVID vaccination would receive support or compensation, and Saxony would build a structure for future pandemics.

The AfD wants the COVID period to be investigated. A committee in the state parliament should do this. It should examine the government's rules. People who got sick from the vaccine should get help or money. Saxony should also prepare better for new pandemics.

The committee would focus on the staffing and financial effects on Saxony's health system, including the vaccine mandate for medical staff. Special attention would go to the effects on the mental and physical development of children and young people. For future pandemics, the party calls for quickly deployable infection clinics and intensive care units as well as secure information channels. The course of infections and related problems such as vaccine complications would be scientifically evaluated on a mandatory basis and made publicly accessible.