FDP on health and care

The FDP wants medical and psychological research to focus more on women, arguing that it has so far been geared mainly toward men. It also calls for more gynecological care, better cancer prevention, and comprehensive help for endometriosis and after miscarriages.

Medical research has mostly studied men. The FDP wants more research on women's health. There should be more gynecologists in Bremen and Bremerhaven. Health insurers should pay for all needed endometriosis treatment. Endometriosis is a painful illness involving tissue like the lining of the womb.

The platform points to frequent misdiagnoses in women, for example with autism and ADHD. Education and prevention for breast and cervical cancer are to be improved. Women with acute gynecological cancer would get low-cost, uncomplicated psychological counseling independent of their health insurer. For endometriosis, research funding would rise in line with need, insurers would fully pay for surgery and medication, and the city of Bremen would push for a treatment center. After miscarriages, the FDP calls for psychological support recommended by the gynecologist and for awareness campaigns.

The FDP wants every district of Bremen and Bremerhaven to have enough general practitioners and specialists. The Kassenärztliche Vereinigung (association of statutory health insurance physicians) is to draw up a care plan with the health department, and emergency services are to be expanded.

Some neighborhoods have too few doctors' offices. The FDP wants to change that. The doctors' association should make a plan together with the city. Emergency services by doctors should also grow. Doctors with their own offices should stay.

The physicians' association is to plan both cities at a fine-grained level and even out the unequal spread of practices. The FDP wants to counter practices that have stopped taking new patients. General and dental emergency services are to grow in all Bremen districts, and eye emergency services in Bremen, Bremen-Nord and Bremerhaven. Where hospitals expand outpatient services, care by self-employed doctors is to remain in place. Medical care centers run by the doctors working there are supported, and municipal or nonprofit ones where gaps cannot be closed otherwise.

The FDP calls for a thorough needs assessment for hospitals and wants to adopt a state hospital plan by 2024 at the latest. All sites are to be kept through specialization, and the hospital group Gesundheit Nord (GeNo) is to be fundamentally reorganized.

The FDP wants to keep all hospitals in Bremen and Bremerhaven. There should be a new plan for this by 2024. Each hospital should build on its special strengths. The hospital group GeNo should be reorganized. The single hospitals should decide more on their own.

The plan is to be coordinated with the surrounding region and cover medical focus areas as well as less red tape, more targeted investment and digitalization. Hospitals with outstanding quality are to receive bonus payments. After a structural reform, GeNo is to be put on a sound financial footing, clear its renovation backlog and move central administration back to the individual sites. Municipal hospitals are to be paid for services they perform for the public health service. Klinikum Bremerhaven Reinkenheide is to remain a municipally owned maximum-care hospital; non-public hospitals are also supported, and rebuilding projects at Bremerhaven hospitals are to get investment funding.

The FDP wants more treatment and counseling services close to home for people with mental illness. A central coordination office is to provide faster help in acute cases, and campaigns are to raise public awareness of the issue.

The FDP wants more help for people with mental illness. There should be more places for treatment and advice close to home. A central office should organize help in an emergency. The FDP also wants campaigns. They should show that mental illness is as serious as physical illness.

According to the platform, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed large gaps in psychiatric care. Outpatient and inpatient services and counseling centers are to be expanded. Medical and psychological services are to be better linked so that specialists, therapists and patients communicate more easily. The physicians' association hotlines that arrange therapy places are to be expanded and improved. A coordination office is to connect the physicians' association, institutes and psychologists.

The FDP rejects new taxes on fat, sugar, dairy products or meat. In its view, lifestyle is a matter for the individual, and the state should limit itself to education and prevention.

The FDP wants no new taxes on sugar, fat, dairy products or meat. It says each person decides how healthy to live. The state should only inform and help prevent illness. The information should be based on science.

The platform notes that the pandemic changed awareness of hygiene and health. Whether someone lives healthily is nonetheless not the state's business, it says. The FDP sees the state's task as communicating health science content. It welcomes prevention and education campaigns that rest on scientific findings.

The FDP wants to give public health offices more staff and better technology so they can respond quickly in a crisis. It wants to do without restrictive COVID measures and continue research on long COVID.

Public health offices should get more staff. They should also get better technology. Open jobs should be filled right away. The FDP wants no more COVID rules that restrict people. Research on long COVID should go on.

According to the platform, the pandemic showed that a capable public health service is needed. The staff increases agreed in the ÖGD-Pakt (a federal-state pact for the public health service) are to be carried out, and vacant posts filled without delay. The FDP now regards COVID as endemic and considers restrictive measures unnecessary; hygiene rules are to apply in a targeted way in hospitals and in homes for the elderly and nursing homes when needed. Because the causes and treatment of long COVID are not yet sufficiently understood, research is to continue.

The FDP wants to tackle staff shortages in nursing and health professions with more training, better working conditions and faster recognition of foreign qualifications. Nursing assistants are to relieve qualified nurses of simpler tasks.

Nursing and health jobs lack skilled workers. The FDP wants more training and more study places for these jobs. Degrees from other countries should be recognized faster. Nurses should get flexible hours and good child care. Assistants should take over simple tasks from them.

Initial and continuing training is to be strengthened in both cities, including academic programs for midwives and therapists at Hochschule Bremen, the physician assistant program in Bremerhaven and nursing science at the university. Training is to be adequately paid or supported through BAföG (student aid); the state is to fund more training of nursing assistants and of palliative care specialists. Attractive residency positions are meant to draw doctors. The FDP considers medical school training possible in cooperation with other universities and supports the Gesundheitscampus Bremen (health campus). Qualifications, especially from European countries, are to be recognized far more easily.

The FDP wants to train more midwives, win back those who have left the profession and improve working conditions. It supports midwife centers in underserved neighborhoods and midwife-led delivery rooms.

The FDP wants to train more midwives. Midwives who stopped working should come back. The work should get better. Then part-time midwives may work more hours. Neighborhoods with too little care should get midwife centers.

In the FDP's view, better working conditions would also lead part-time staff to increase their hours. The platform regards the academic midwifery program, especially at Hochschule Bremen, as an upgrade for the profession. The FDP also calls for more research on the physiology of birth so that midwives can work in a more practical and scientific way. Midwife centers in poorly served parts of Bremen and Bremerhaven are welcomed.

The FDP wants to expand addiction prevention in schools and youth facilities while making illegal drugs harder to obtain. People with addictions are to get easy-to-reach support, including a diamorphine clinic and privately funded drug checking.

The FDP wants to protect young people from drugs. Schools should run more programs for this. More police should make buying drugs harder. People with addictions should get help more easily.

The platform calls for more police presence at hotspots to make it harder to buy illegal drugs. It plans a diamorphine clinic, lower barriers to treatment with diamorphine (medically administered heroin), and the return of psychosocial support during substitution treatment. The drug consumption room near the train station is to be supplemented with further services in the short term, and the FDP calls for more syringe vending machines. Drug checking, meaning testing drugs for their contents, is to be allowed with private funding. Relatives who suffer as co-dependents are also to be considered in support services.

The FDP wants good, affordable care for the aging population in the state of Bremen. The 2018 geriatric care plan is to be revised and give more weight to inpatient care for people with dementia.

The FDP wants good care for old people. Care should stay affordable. Care workers should have less strain. People with dementia should get better care in homes.

The FDP welcomes the new staffing rules for full-time residential care homes planned for 2023 but considers them insufficient. Care staff are to be relieved on an ongoing basis. Bremen's geriatric care plan from 2018 is to be updated. Geriatric psychiatric conditions such as dementia, and inpatient accommodation for those affected, are to receive more attention.

The FDP wants to further expand outpatient and inpatient palliative care and give hospices more financial support. It argues that changing family structures make more professional services necessary.

The FDP wants more help for dying people. There should be more hospices. A hospice is a house where dying people get care. Hospices should get more money. Children's hospices should be well equipped too.

Alongside outpatient hospice work and end-of-life care in nursing homes, the platform considers enough inpatient hospices and children's hospices necessary. The FDP sees growing demand especially in Bremen-Nord. More independent facilities with a family-like character are to be created. Higher funding is meant to let hospices meet legal requirements and cover their costs. In children's hospices, parents and siblings are also to get space and psychosocial support, with attention to the siblings' school and leisure needs.