The Bavarian children’s hospitals want to prevent renewed overload by allocating free beds to their young patients more quickly. An online information and exchange system called “virtual children’s clinic” is intended to ensure that the 39 participating clinics have an overview of available treatment places and can allocate them accordingly.
“You get a quick overview of available capacities,” explained Health Minister Judith Gerlach (CSU) at the start on Monday. “This means that unnecessarily long journeys can be avoided.” The second step next year will be to set up a telemedicine network.
The project was initiated by the regional association of senior pediatricians. “We have learned and acted from the experiences of the last few years,” explained its chairman, Professor Matthias Keller from the Third Order Children’s Hospital in Passau.
Last winter, many children’s hospitals nationwide were overloaded due to a wave of infections with the RS virus, and some hospitals no longer had any free beds. According to Gerlach, there are no signs of a similarly dramatic situation this winter. “The infection situation is currently not worrying,” said Minister Gerlach. But we take the experiences from last winter seriously.”