Grüne on health and care

The Greens want to secure basic medical care in cities and rural areas, including through health centers, mobile practices, and community nurses. Family doctor coverage is to be strengthened, especially in underserved areas.

Everyone in Hesse should have a doctor nearby. The Greens want to fund health centers for this. Different health workers work together there. There should also be more family doctors in rural areas.

Outpatient and inpatient services are to work together more closely and receive further investment funds for this, including for digital infrastructure. The Greens are keeping the rural doctor quota and the expansion of medical school places, and want to examine cooperative family practice models based on Baden-Württemberg's example. Community health nurses are to work in the centers. The results of the roundtable on obstetric care are to be implemented to improve support from midwives. Waiting times for mental health treatment should fall, and trauma clinics should provide help after violence.

The Greens want to rewrite the state hospital plan and further increase investment funding for hospitals. Ambulance services, emergency rooms, and on-call doctors are to work together more closely.

The Greens want to renew the planning for hospitals. Hospitals should get more money for investment. Not every hospital has to offer everything. But in an emergency, a hospital must be quick to reach.

Planning is to look at outpatient and inpatient care together. Working with municipalities, the Greens want to secure hospital care that is capable and within reach. Local emergency care is to be guaranteed at all times. The program points to Hesse's model of cross-sector outpatient emergency care (SaN), which is meant to free up emergency rooms and ambulance services for serious cases.

The Greens want to expand inpatient and home care services, especially day care and short-term care, along with support for family caregivers. A broader recruitment drive is meant to bring more staff into health and care professions.

The Greens want more care services. People who care for relatives should get more help. More people should work in care. Foreign qualifications should be recognized faster.

Care support centers are to be expanded, networked through a state service office, and supplemented with case management across the state. A dementia strategy is to be developed based on the “Demenzatlas Hessen” (dementia atlas). The recruitment drive includes easier entry into the professions, programs for career changers, more one-year care training, quick recognition of foreign qualifications, and programs for immigrant skilled workers. Degree programs and part-time training are to be expanded. The Greens support talks on a state chamber of nursing modeled on Rhineland-Palatinate and want to expand palliative care, especially outpatient.

The Greens want clearing offices to help people without health insurance get coverage, and plan an anonymous health voucher for those who cannot be placed. Health promotion and prevention are also to be expanded.

Some people have no health insurance. Advice offices should help them get it. If that does not work, there will be an anonymous health voucher. With it, they can still see a doctor.

The clearing offices are meant to open the way into regular health insurance. On prevention, the program plans a campaign on endometriosis, more research on long Covid, and an HIV strategy that maps available care. Outpatient and inpatient rehabilitation is to be secured. Prevention programs for family caregivers and a roundtable against violence toward older, disabled, and care-dependent people are also planned. Research on sex- and gender-specific medicine is to be stepped up and reflected in training and practice.

The Greens want to further strengthen local public health offices through the state office for health and care. These offices are also to protect people from heat and extreme weather, and hospitals are to get support on the path to climate neutrality.

Climate change brings more hot days. That can make people sick. The Greens want to protect people better from heat. Towns and cities should get their own heat plans. Hospitals should become climate-friendly.

The basis is Hesse's heat action plan, which is to be supplemented by municipal heat protection plans. A new state climate and transformation fund would finance adaptation measures at hospitals. The “Green Hospital” initiative is to receive funding, as is training in climate management. The program points to more hot days, overheated city centers, and extreme weather as reasons.

The Greens want a drug policy built on education, prevention and help for people with addiction. In the platform's view, criminalizing addicts has failed to achieve its goals; the party welcomes cannabis legalization at the federal level.

The Greens want to help people with addiction instead of punishing them. There should be more therapy. There should be rooms where addicts can take drugs more safely. The Greens welcome plans to allow cannabis.

Plans include more therapy and substitution treatment, drug consumption rooms, street work and measures for neighborhoods with an open drug scene. Teenagers and young adults are to be better informed, including about gambling addiction, and schools, youth services and addiction services are to cooperate more closely. Municipalities that want to become model regions for legal cannabis will get support. Drug checking, meaning testing substances for their contents, is meant to make occasional use safer.

The Greens want to fund Hesse's university hospitals adequately and create more places to study medicine. The party considers the privatization of the University Hospital of Giessen and Marburg (UKGM) a mistake and wants to buy it back once that is possible on acceptable terms.

The Greens want good funding for university hospitals. There should be more places to study medicine. The university hospital in Giessen and Marburg belongs to a private company. The Greens want to buy it back if the price is right.

The platform calls on the federal government to create a third funding pillar for university hospitals and to share the costs of the reformed medical degree and of academic training for non-physician health professions. Routes into medical school that do not depend on top grades are to remain. According to the platform, a buyback of UKGM is not possible at present. Until then, the existing agreements are meant to give both sites reliability.

The Greens want gender-specific differences to be given more weight in care, prevention and research, because the platform says they are currently neglected. Women's health centers are to be funded statewide and a research unit for gender medicine established. Schools and public facilities are to offer free pads and tampons.

Women and men sometimes get sick in different ways. Medicines can also work differently. The Greens want more research on this. There should be more health centers for women. Pads and tampons should be free in schools.

Women's health centers and services such as mother-child health retreats are to be supported through more health coordination offices in municipalities. The research unit for gender medicine is to be set up with Hesse's three universities that have medical schools and is to anchor the subject in teaching and pharmacy as well. Health data are to be collected in a differentiated way, also with regard to trans and intersex people. In addition to free hygiene products, schools and public facilities are to provide information on contact points for pregnancy conflicts, violence and pastoral care. The party wants to support initiatives that cover the cost of prescription contraceptives for low-income women.

The Greens want to strengthen care for pregnant women and improve midwife support around birth. The basis is the set of measures from the "Runder Tisch Geburtshilfe in Hessen" (Hesse roundtable on obstetrics). The party also advocates childbirth free from violence.

Pregnant women should get better care. Midwives should support parents before, during and after birth. Hesse already has a plan for this. The Greens want to carry out this plan and improve it.

The roundtable's proposals are to be implemented, evaluated and developed further. The goal is better midwife support for expectant parents before, during and after birth. On violence during childbirth, the party plans awareness-raising and support services for those affected or traumatized.

The Greens want to build a statewide network of clinics and practices that perform abortions and to fully fund pregnancy conflict counseling. At the federal level, the party supports efforts to stop treating abortion as a crime and calls for a rule against harassment outside counseling centers.

Women should be able to end a pregnancy close to where they live. There should be enough clinics and doctors for this. The state should pay fully for counseling. Nobody should harass women outside counseling centers. Abortion should no longer be a crime.

Every woman is to be able to get information near her home about recognized methods and choose the method herself. Open-ended counseling is to be accessible anonymously and without pressure; the party demands a legally sound federal rule against so-called sidewalk harassment. The party intends to evaluate the findings of the federal commission set up on this issue. That commission is to reconcile these goals with constitutional and ethical questions concerning protection of unborn life.