CDU on health and care

The CDU wants to improve staffing at the professional and volunteer fire departments and aid organizations and relieve ambulance services of non-emergency calls. It argues that the chance of getting timely help in Hamburg depends on where a person lives or happens to be.

The CDU wants to strengthen the fire department and ambulance services. The fire department should find new staff more easily. Ambulances should only come for real emergencies. For lighter cases, specially trained paramedics should come to the home.

To attract recruits, the platform plans flat-rate payments per deployment and wants the additional paramedic qualification reflected in job grading. Hamburg is to get its own project modeled on the "Hanse-Sani" program. There, specially trained paramedics go to patients when an emergency call reveals an unclear situation without danger to life. This is meant to avoid unnecessary trips to the hospital.

The CDU wants to secure outpatient care through existing practices and rejects parallel structures such as Gesundheitskioske (walk-in health advice centers). The city government is to act as a partner to doctors, hospitals and insurers, cut red tape and provide sufficient hospital investment funding.

The CDU wants to strengthen family doctors and specialists. It does not want new walk-in health advice centers. Every district should have enough family doctors and children's doctors. Doctors and nurses should have less paperwork. Hospitals should get enough money for investments.

The platform opposes additional checks on care providers and state-directed medicine. Administration is to be reduced and care digitally connected. Care coordinated by the family doctor is to be promoted, partly to shield practices from extra strain caused by the hospital reform. For the CDU, local pharmacies are part of care close to home. Psychiatric and psychotherapeutic services are to be expanded and linked up. The party supports combined emergency centers at hospitals; centers that already exist should not close if possible.

The CDU wants to create more university and training places in the health professions because demand is rising with demographic change. In addition, skilled workers are to be recruited abroad and their qualifications recognized faster.

Hamburg needs more doctors, nurses and therapists. So the CDU wants to create more places for study and training. It also wants to bring skilled workers from other countries. Hamburg should recognize their qualifications faster.

The expansion covers medical and pharmacy degrees as well as therapy and nursing professions. According to the platform, new sites and cooperation with private providers are also options. Recruitment should not be left to individual companies alone: the partners of the metropolitan region are to present themselves in a joint campaign in suitable countries. Recognition procedures in Hamburg are to take less time than they do now.

The CDU wants to change the fixed skilled-staff quotas in long-term care and make greater use of new job profiles under the supervision of qualified nurses. Family caregivers are to be supported through more counseling, training and short-term care places.

Long-term care lacks skilled workers. The CDU wants to change the fixed rules on the share of skilled staff. Helpers with shorter training should do more of the work. Family members should get more advice and courses. There should be more places for short-term care.

The platform backs the one-year care assistant training and simpler rules for on-the-job instruction. The aim is that people needing care do not have to stay in the hospital for lack of a nursing home place, and that families are not overwhelmed. Counseling and training for relatives under Section 45 of Social Code Book XI are to be expanded, as are places for short-term and respite care in nursing homes. Care support centers are to work more closely with home-care providers.

The CDU wants to revive the "Pakt für Prävention" (prevention pact) and work with many partners to improve the public's health knowledge. The focus is on young people, people at particular health risk, and people unfamiliar with the health system.

The CDU wants to prevent illness. To do that, it wants to revive an old alliance. It is called the prevention pact. Many groups should take part, such as schools, daycare centers and health insurers.

Partners are to include the health sector, insurers, daycare centers, schools, sports, self-help groups, welfare associations and civil society; exercise and healthy eating are among the topics. Services to prevent sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV are to remain in place for young people and for groups especially affected. More children and teenagers are to attend preventive checkups. The public health service is to get enough resources for school medical and dental screening. School first-aid services are to be set up everywhere.

The CDU wants to undo cannabis legalization at the federal level and, until then, crack down in Hamburg on the supply of drugs to minors. Addiction services are meant to keep people alive but above all open ways out of dependency; the platform also addresses gambling and online addiction.

The CDU thinks legalizing cannabis was wrong. It wants to change that at the national level. Children and teenagers should grow up without drugs. Addicted people should get help to quit. The CDU also wants to fight illegal gambling harder.

The guiding idea for prevention is a childhood and youth without drugs, with thorough education for young adults too. The CDU keeps low-threshold services including supervised consumption rooms, but ties public funding to a focus on quitting and measurable effect; self-help groups are to get more support. Alcohol-dependent migrants from Eastern Europe are to be returned, with native-language counselors, to the support systems of their home countries so that Hamburg's addiction services do not act as an incentive to migrate. Against illegal gambling, the party plans more inspections and specialized prosecutors' offices, alongside a legal market with strong player and youth protection. Against phone and online addiction, a strategy coordinated with schools is to limit use or ban it in some areas.

The CDU wants to record the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic in a continuously updated crisis management plan for all of Hamburg. This is meant to prepare the health and care system for disasters, crises and war.

The CDU wants to learn from the COVID years. Hamburg should get a plan for crises. The plan should always be up to date. The city should store protective equipment. This way doctors and nurses can still help in a crisis.

The plan is meant to ensure that the health system and the districts' public health service can keep functioning in future crises. For occupational medicine and close-contact services, the platform proposes, among other things, a Hamburg hygiene seal. Those involved in civil protection are to be better connected. More reusable products and rotating stockpiles of medical goods such as protective equipment are to secure supplies.

The CDU wants data protection rules to be applied more pragmatically for health research and wants Hamburg connected to the European Health Data Space. The city is to lead Germany in digitalization, telemedicine and artificial intelligence in health care.

The CDU wants to help health research. Data protection rules should be applied more loosely. Hamburg should be a leader in digital medicine. This includes treatment by video.

Once the European Health Data Space is adopted, Hamburg as a research location is to become internationally compatible. In digitalization, telemedicine and AI in health care, the CDU aims for international competitiveness and a leading role in Germany. Health care is also to contribute to climate and resource protection through smart technology and fewer single-use products; the platform cites a 5.2 percent share of national CO2 emissions.

The CDU wants to ensure enough treatment and care services for people with mental illness, above all places in outpatient social psychiatry. It also considers secure residential places in Hamburg necessary.

People with mental illness should get enough help. The CDU wants more places for support in daily life. It also wants secure places in Hamburg. Then those affected do not have to live far away.

The program names the service area "Assistenz in der Sozialpsychiatrie" (assistance in social psychiatry) and enough places in outpatient social psychiatry so that those affected can take part in community life. It also calls for (optionally) secure residential capacity in the city. The reason given is that those affected would otherwise stay in hospitals permanently or have to live in distant facilities outside the city.