SPD on health and care

The SPD wants to introduce a state care allowance for people in need of care who have only pocket money at their free disposal. At the federal level it advocates solidarity-based funding of care and less bureaucracy.

Some people who need care have only a small amount of pocket money. The SPD wants the state to give them extra money. They can use it for things like personal hygiene and medicine. For the SPD, care should not be a business.

The state care allowance (Landespflegegeld) is meant to enable participation in social life and cover necessary expenses, such as personal hygiene and co-payments for medication. At the federal level, the SPD wants to push for sound, solidarity-based funding of care. Bureaucratic rules and procedures are to be reduced and staff strengthened. The program sees care not as a market but as an essential public service.

The SPD wants to ease the burden on people who care for relatives and create more short-term care places. The platform argues that relatives carry most of the load in long-term care.

Many people care for their parents at home. The SPD wants to help these people. There should be more places for short-term care. People in need of care stay there for a short time. Advice about care should also be easier to understand.

Besides more short-term care places, the care emergency hotline is to continue, helping when care has to be arranged at short notice. Advice on care services and nursing homes is to become easier to understand and be linked more closely to neighborhood and senior meeting places. The coordination office for hospice and palliative work will keep receiving support. The SPD also wants to cut red tape in care and strengthen digital processes to relieve staff.

The SPD wants to upgrade nursing and health professions through better training and working conditions in order to keep and attract skilled staff. Foreign qualifications are to be recognized more simply and quickly.

The SPD wants more people to work in care jobs. Training should be good and free of school fees. Working conditions should get better. People who trained abroad should be able to work in Hamburg sooner.

The plan includes academic training paths, wider medical competences, and training without school fees and with pay. The nationally uniform training for nursing assistants is to be implemented. Recognition of foreign qualifications is to be simplified and digitized, with the state examination office equipped to keep deadlines short. Recruitment campaigns and on-the-job training are to be stepped up. For culturally sensitive care, the SPD wants to promote the employment of people with a migration background.

At the federal level, the SPD supports introducing a Bürgerversicherung, a single health insurance covering everyone. Long-term care insurance is also to be financed on a solidarity basis so people can stay at home for a long time.

The SPD supports a Bürgerversicherung. That is one health insurance for all people together. Care insurance should also be paid for by everyone together. People should be able to live at home as long as possible.

The platform links the demand to the goal that medical and care services be open to all regardless of social status, origin, or age. The SPD sees equal care across neighborhoods as a matter of social justice. For both home care and residential care it seeks sustainable, solidarity-based financing. Both demands are addressed to the federal government.

The SPD wants the planning and funding of medical care to reflect how many people are actually treated in Hamburg, including those from surrounding areas. High demand from outside is not to disadvantage Hamburg patients.

Many people from nearby areas see doctors in Hamburg. The SPD wants planning to count them too. Not only the number of residents should count. People in Hamburg should not be worse off because of this.

The SPD wants to push for this with the federal government and the states. Planning is to think more in terms of health regions, meaning connected catchment areas that do not stop at state borders. The platform names the metropolitan region and cooperation with Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein as the framework. Care overall is to be expanded and made more resilient.

The SPD wants to keep investing heavily in Hamburg's hospitals and to specialize and concentrate services more. Emergency care is to be reorganized along the model of integrated emergency centers so that people seeking help are treated faster.

The SPD wants to modernize Hamburg's hospitals. The city will use its own money and federal money for this. Hospitals should specialize in certain treatments. Emergency care should also be organized better.

Hamburg is to keep its leading position in hospital investment, using state funds and money from the federal transformation fund. Quality-oriented hospital planning is to specialize and centralize services, which is also meant to relieve staff. Integrated emergency centers are to ease pressure on emergency rooms and improve coordination with surrounding areas. The AK Altona hospital will be rebuilt with public funding. A special program for sustainable hospitals is meant to save energy and resources.

The SPD wants to improve care around pregnancy and birth by setting up midwife centers in areas where they are needed. This builds on the recommendations of the expert commission "Gesunde Geburt" (Healthy Birth).

The SPD wants better care for pregnant women and young families. There should be midwife centers for this. They will open where midwives are missing. Children's hospitals should get enough money.

Care is to improve before, during, and after birth. Midwife centers are to extend coverage specifically in underserved areas. At the federal level, the SPD wants to keep pushing for solid funding of children's hospitals.

The SPD wants to expand local health centers and social counseling in family doctors' offices so that each district has at least one such center. This is meant to relieve patients and practices in the neighborhoods.

The SPD wants more health centers in the neighborhoods. Every district should have at least one. People get help and advice there. Health insurers should pay part of the cost.

The centers and pilot projects for social counseling in family practices are to be extended. At the federal level, the SPD is pushing for health insurers to share the funding. Digital health projects are to grow; Hamburg is a model region for the telematics infrastructure. The SPD also wants to bring together and broaden support for people with ME/CFS and long COVID.

The SPD wants health promotion to start early and reach all age and population groups. Plans include a heat action plan and a campaign for HPV vaccination.

The SPD wants people to stay healthy in the first place. So there should be more prevention. A plan will protect people on very hot days. The city will also promote a vaccine against HPV. HPV are viruses that can cause cancer.

The heat action plan is to be carried out together with daycare centers, schools, sports clubs, care providers, hospitals, and homeless services, protecting the very young and the old in particular. The HPV campaign follows the recommendations of Germany's Standing Committee on Vaccination. Child and youth health is a priority, for example through school health professionals at elementary schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods. The SPD wants to push for a competence center on FASD and to support district health offices. Accessible sports options close to home are also part of this.

The SPD wants to improve care for people with mental illness and set up community psychiatry networks in all districts. A psychiatry coordination office and a crisis hotline are also planned.

The SPD wants to give better help to people with mental illness. In every district, support services should work together. There will be a crisis hotline. People should get therapy sooner.

The networks are to combine basic social psychiatric care with help for daily living and structuring the day, and to ensure prompt access. A psychiatry coordination office is to expand early, outreach, and pre-forensic services in order to avoid placements in forensic psychiatric detention and repeat stays. Psychotherapy provision in Hamburg is to improve. At the federal level, the SPD calls for updating needs planning for psychotherapy and covering the identified need. The platform points to increased strain since the COVID-19 pandemic.

The SPD wants to reduce the use of legal and illegal drugs through prevention and enforcement and to fight drug dealing. At the same time, help for people with addiction such as consumption rooms and drug checking is to remain and grow.

The SPD wants fewer people to use drugs. The police should go after drug dealers. But people with addiction should get help. There are rooms where they can use drugs under clean conditions. People can also have drugs tested there.

According to the platform, drug policy should be compatible with city life: maintaining public safety and order while stepping up social work for those who are ill. For people with addiction in precarious situations, Hamburg provides low-threshold facilities with consumption rooms and a support system for quitting and therapy. Drug checking, meant to prevent overdoses, is to be expanded. The SPD also supports protection of non-smokers in public spaces such as playgrounds and wants counseling for eating disorders to be open to men as well.

The SPD wants to handle the new cannabis laws strictly in Hamburg, with high fines, tight licensing, and inspections of cultivation associations. It places special weight on protecting children and young people.

Cannabis has recently become partly legal. The SPD wants to apply the new rules strictly in Hamburg. People who break them should pay high fines. Growing clubs will be checked. Children and teenagers should get special protection.

The city is to ensure easily accessible addiction counseling organized by area. Youth services and addiction prevention are to cooperate more closely. Small-scale evaluations are meant to show the city early on whether legalization is affecting young people negatively.