In medicine, says Markus Wehler, there is the term “bone conduction”. The skull bone transmits the sound into the inner ear. If concrete is renovated, it is “unbearable”. So you can imagine how the clinic manager Wehler and the staff of the Augsburg University Hospital (UKA) feel that the renovation of the house is no longer an issue. “We’re doing very well with it,” says Wehler.
The University Hospital Augsburg is one of the largest hospitals in the republic, with around 1750 beds. Because the house is now 40 years old, a general renovation was initially planned. Michael Beyer, who Markus Wehler replaced as medical director of the clinic in June, spoke of a “mammoth task” on an interim basis. According to Beyer’s calculations, the renovation would have taken up to 20 years and cost around 1.5 billion euros. Because the costs for a new building are likely to be similarly high, the Augsburg State Building Authority had already shown itself open to a rethink in spring 2022. The SPD in the state parliament had also advocated examining a new building for the university hospital. Science Minister Markus Blume (CSU) has now decided “that there is no way around a new building”.
For Blume, a refurbishment would have meant that the employees would have lived “on a permanent construction site for more than 30 years,” he said on Wednesday when asked by the SZ. All four bed towers in the hospital would have had to be gradually taken out of operation and completely refurbished. Everything during ongoing operations, which would have been an immense burden, also for the patients, of course. Containers and interim buildings could have kept the clinic running, but there was concern in Augsburg that specialist staff and patients would prefer to go somewhere else where everyday clinic life is more orderly. If one were to calculate in euros what the loss of staff and patients due to the renovation could cost, the decision to build a new building might have been made earlier, says clinic boss Wehler.
However, it is unclear whether the circulating new building costs of 1.5 billion euros are actually sufficient. Before planning begins, politicians must officially decide on the new building, which Minister Blume says should happen before the state elections in autumn 2023. It will probably be a few years before construction begins, and even more before the clinic is up and running. In order to shorten the lengthy processes and ultimately save costs, Blume wants to go “new paths” instead of building in the classic state-run way. The new clinic could therefore be built privately or in a public-private partnership.
The future location has not yet been determined
In any case, a renovation would have been “ludicrous” for Markus Wehler. They would have built “quasi a second hospital” in Augsburg, one or more interim buildings, which “they then dismantle again”. For the clinic boss, the fact that the renovation was discussed for so long is because the circumstances “underestimated everyone a bit”.
At the end of the year, Wehler’s time as interim head of the clinic comes to an end, then he hands over to Klaus Markstaller, who loudly Augsburg General, which first reported on the new building on Tuesday evening, presents a “health park”. Specialists, physiotherapy, restaurants and hotels should also settle on the new clinic site. More outpatient concepts, plus more recreation areas for the workforce, which should help to retain employees and attract new ones.
As far as the location of the new building is concerned, no decision has yet been made. Because an intensive extension is being built to the west of the old clinic, it would make sense to dock the new building there. The space for that would be there. The Augsburg University Hospital would then only move a few hundred meters further to the north-west.