CDU on health and care

The CDU wants to make care by relatives and volunteers easier and to strengthen home care relative to nursing homes. It points to the rising number of people needing care, staff shortages, and growing costs.

More and more people need care. The CDU wants to support relatives and volunteers who provide it. There should be more short-term care places close to home. Nursing homes should be inspected every year.

Volunteer care is to involve less paperwork, and caregivers are to get help with administrative matters. Additional incentives are meant to make caring for relatives easier to combine with everyday life. New short-term and respite care places close to home are to relieve relatives. The management of care places is to be digitized and to bring together the health and social services departments. Nursing homes are to be inspected annually and mostly unannounced, under the standard of the Bremisches Wohn- und Betreuungsgesetz (Bremen's residential care law) as it stood before its last amendment. The CDU also wants to ensure dignified end-of-life care.

The CDU wants to secure medical care for older people and do more for people with dementia. It points out that Bremen has the highest share nationwide of insured people with a dementia diagnosis.

The CDU wants good care for older people. Family doctors should be close to home. People with dementia should get more help. Dementia is an illness that makes people forget many things. The CDU will look into a special village for people with dementia.

The CDU focuses on high-quality family doctor care close to home and on geriatric care in hospitals. Because it sees health and long-term care in old age as belonging together, it again calls for a single government department covering both. Neighborhoods are to be adapted to the needs of people with dementia, and local dementia networks are to be supported. A dementia village modeled on examples in other municipalities is to be examined.

The CDU wants to plan care by doctors' offices and by hospitals jointly in the future. The basis is to be an analysis of actual care needs covering Bremen, Bremerhaven and the surrounding area.

The CDU wants to plan doctors' offices and hospitals together. Today they are planned separately. First, a study should show what people really need. Hospital planning should then follow that study.

The platform calls for a care needs analysis that is updated regularly and underlies the state's hospital planning. The number of planned beds would no longer serve as the benchmark. Planning is to reflect digitalization, specialization and the shift of hospital services to outpatient settings. Special attention goes to the handoff between specialists and basic hospital care. The CDU also counts on the federal government's announced reform of per-case flat fees.

The CDU wants to digitalize health care in Bremen and develop the municipal hospitals into so-called smart hospitals. This is meant to cut red tape and free up more time for treating and caring for patients.

The CDU wants more digital technology in health care. The city hospitals should handle almost all steps digitally. That means less paperwork. Doctors and nurses then have more time for patients.

Nearly all hospital processes, from admission to discharge, are to run digitally. Doctors' offices and public health offices are also to become more digital; the platform cites chatbots that answer initial questions and book appointments. The federal-state digital pact under the Hospital Future Act is to be implemented. The CDU wants to fund digital strategies spanning several areas of care through separate investment money. The goal is to make Bremen's hospitals the leading ones in the northwest.

The CDU wants to gradually raise the state's investment funding for hospitals to 90 million euros a year. All hospitals in the state are to receive the money reliably and on equal terms.

The CDU wants to give hospitals more money for investments. In the end it should be 90 million euros a year. All hospitals in the state should be treated equally. That way they can plan better.

The 90 million euros matches the minimum need identified by the hospital association. The amount is to follow from medium-term hospital planning based on an overall medical strategy and actual need. Restructuring funds are to go to services that link outpatient and inpatient care, such as medical care centers or health centers in the neighborhoods. The CDU justifies this with the need for hospitals to plan reliably.

The CDU wants the state to stop covering the losses of the municipal hospital group Gesundheit Nord (GeNo). The group is to present a restructuring plan, and the health department would no longer chair its supervisory board.

Gesundheit Nord is the city hospital group in Bremen. It loses money. The CDU no longer wants to cover these losses with tax money. The group should present a recovery plan within six months. The health senator should no longer lead its supervisory board.

GeNo's management and supervisory board are to present a viable restructuring plan within six months. In the CDU's view, ending the deficit coverage is a precondition for permanently raising investment funds for all hospitals. The platform sees a conflict of interest when the same person chairs the board and is responsible for the state's hospital planning. The chair is therefore to be filled differently in the future.

The CDU wants to create what it calls the largest and most attractive health campus in northern Germany and draw more young people into health professions. Training sites, training places and career paths are to be expanded for this.

The CDU wants more young people to choose health jobs. For that, there should be good places to train. A nursing academy is to be built in Bremerhaven. There should be more training places for assistants in doctors' offices.

The platform treats the health campus at Hochschule Bremen and the physician assistant program in Bremerhaven as a starting point. The CDU wants to push for the nursing academy and the health care center at the Reinkenheide hospital. Medical and dental assistants are to get more training places and better paths for advancement. A physician assistant program with an outpatient focus at Hochschule Bremen is also to be examined. The CDU considers cooperation across providers and regions necessary to tackle the skills shortage.

The CDU wants a “Konzertierte Aktion Pflege” (concerted action on nursing) to recruit new nurses and bring former ones back into the profession. Bremen is to become a more attractive place to work for doctors and nurses.

Bremen does not have enough nurses. The CDU wants to win new nurses. People who left the job should come back. The CDU also wants to talk about skilled workers from abroad. It will look into flexible child care at the city hospitals.

For this effort the CDU wants to draw on studies, networks and alliances. It points to the generalist nursing training and growing competition between hospital and elder care for young staff. The platform calls for an open debate on recruiting skilled staff from abroad and integrating them. Flexible child care at GeNo sites is to be examined so that shift work and family fit together better.

The CDU wants to secure family doctors and specialists close to home by creating medical care centers or health centers in the neighborhoods. In areas with gaps in care, incentives are meant to get doctors to set up practice.

The CDU wants doctors close to where people live. For that, there should be health centers in the neighborhoods. Several doctors work there under one roof. Where doctors are missing, the CDU wants incentives for new practices.

The CDU wants to examine whether city and state properties can be used for health care. The public property agency Immobilien Bremen and the housing companies GEWOBA and BREBAU are to develop such centers together with the health industry. Prompt appointments are also a goal. The platform additionally calls for a medical treatment center for adults with intellectual or severe multiple disabilities (MZEB).

The CDU wants more services offering abortions in the state of Bremen, especially medication abortions. The legally required counseling before an abortion is to stay in place. Institutions working on sexual health are also to cooperate more closely.

The CDU wants more places in Bremen that offer abortions. Abortion with medication matters most to the party. Women must still go to counseling first. That rule is to stay.

The program calls for building up abortion services according to need, in particular medication abortion. At the same time, the CDU insists that the counseling required by law remain. To promote sexual health, doctors' offices, hospitals, the public health service and organizations such as Pro Familia or Aids-Hilfe Bremen are to be better linked.

The CDU wants to equip the public health offices in Bremen and Bremerhaven with more qualified staff, investment and digital tools. They are to rank among the most digitalized health offices in Germany. Organization and workflows are also to improve.

The CDU wants stronger public health offices. They are to get enough well-trained staff. The offices are to work in a more modern and digital way. Knowledge from the university is to help.

The plan includes enough qualified employees, attractive working conditions and more investment in infrastructure. The program stresses that not every shortcoming is about money and announces better work organization, including in cooperation across government departments. University expertise is to flow into the offices' administration, communication and public image. The "Public Health" degree program is to be strengthened and used for health management, prevention and health promotion.

The CDU wants to focus Bremen's drug services on withdrawal and rejects permanent state-funded drug use. A drug consumption room is to serve only as a transit point on the way into treatment. The whole support system is to be reviewed externally and moved under state responsibility.

The CDU wants to help addicted people quit. Withdrawal is the main goal for the party. A room for drug use is to be only a stop along the way. In the future, the public health offices are to run the help.

Outside experts are to evaluate the state's drug support system, and makeshift solutions are no longer to be funded. The money is to go to additional substitution and withdrawal places tied to hospitals and staffed with medical personnel. Drug and alcohol services are to be attached to the public health offices through permanent specialist positions instead of being run by independent providers. A permanent consumption room in the city center is to open in the second half of 2023, and another in Bremen-Nord is to be examined. Substitution services are to be reorganized at a distance from the train station area, and support around the main station is to be realigned and concentrated.