Lower Bavaria is the only Bavarian administrative district without a medical faculty. At the same time, medical care in the region is at risk, warns, for example, the President of the Bavarian Medical Association, Gerald Quitterer, himself from Lower Bavaria. The number of medical students in Bavaria is increasing. Only too few of them practice later in Lower Bavaria – because doctors settle down where they studied, so the thesis.
Therefore, Lower Bavaria should get a medical campus, a complicated construct in which the University of Passau cooperates with either the University of Regensburg or the Technical University of Munich (TUM). The students would be enrolled in Regensburg or Munich, and they then complete the clinical part of their training in Lower Bavaria. Around 100 students per year are trained at several Lower Bavarian clinics. Deggendorf, Landshut, Passau and Straubing were initially planned as locations. Lecture halls and seminar rooms would have to be created there and professorships established.
Science Minister Bernd Sibler says: “As a Lower Bavarian, it is important to me to make this project a success.”
(Photo: Robert Haas/Robert Haas)
TUM and Uni Regensburg each submitted concepts to the Ministry of Science in spring 2021. These were reviewed by external experts from a university outside of Bavaria. Since then, Science Minister Bernd Sibler has only vaguely commented on the verdict of the experts.
In an interview with the Passau New Press he spoke of “pent-up demand” that the experts had decided on in the feasibility studies of the Technical University of Munich and the University of Regensburg. The SZ has received the external assessment. The conclusion of the experts sounds less like a mere “need to catch up” and more like fundamental problems that speak against a medical campus in Lower Bavaria.
It’s about keeping future doctors in the region
The experts believe that the primary goal of the medical campus, namely to create a kind of “sticky effect” that leads to the students developing a bond with the region and then wanting to stay there, has not been met. As long as the living conditions in Lower Bavaria are “not seen as sufficiently attractive”, the approach will not bear fruit. However, living conditions are the key factor in deciding where to live and work. In their conclusion on the concept of the University of Regensburg, the experts write that there is “hardly any chance of sustainable structural support for the region”.
Science Minister Bernd Sibler continues to be combative in an interview with the SZ; he does not see the conclusion of the experts as a dampener. “We are well advised to seek outside expertise. That is completely normal.” The concepts are currently in a second round, the improved versions are being examined by the Ministry of Science.
“As a Lower Bavarian, it’s important to me to make this project a success,” says Sibler. And it would be a success if more young medical professionals settled in Lower Bavaria. You have to select and recruit suitable applicants.
The lower cost of living is considered a location advantage
The report criticizes how this should work, of all things, with returnees from Riga and Budapest. The Lower Bavaria course of the TUM concept, for example, is aimed at students who have already completed the pre-clinical course at another university, primarily abroad in Riga and Budapest. Many German high school graduates who do not have the necessary Abitur average choose this path – if they have the necessary money for it. After passing the preliminary clinic, most of them want to go back to a German university.
TUM wants to recruit some of these returnees for the course in Lower Bavaria. According to experts, however, it is questionable whether these obviously “internationally very mobile” students will stay in Lower Bavaria after their studies. It remains to be seen whether TUM will stick to this model.
In Passau, people are optimistic about the “sticking effect”: “We think it is very likely that medical students will decide to complete their specialist training at clinics in a medical campus in Lower Bavaria and then stay in the region. This is already noticeable here that regions with lower living and housing costs than the metropolitan areas will become more attractive,” says Matthias Wettstein, Medical Director of the Passau Clinic, which is to be part of the campus.
Minister Sibler apparently favors a different type of recruitment anyway: from the region for the region, so to speak. He refers to the medical campus in Upper Franconia, which started recently. “There you can see that there are many applicants from the region.” Sibler assumes that this will also be the case in Lower Bavaria and that these students will subsequently settle there. “Out of local ties.”
You often hear the reference to Upper Franconia, but there are big differences. The universities of Erlangen-Nuremberg and Bayreuth only cooperate with two clinics. With the many players in Lower Bavaria, on the other hand, according to the experts, it is unclear who will have overall responsibility. “I’ve had many, many conversations with local politicians, I know the protagonists in the district offices and town halls, in the clinics: I sense a high level of willingness to solve the problems constructively,” says Sibler. “That gives cause for optimism.”
“As a Lower Bavarian, I’m in love with success.”
Or cause for desire. According to Wettstein, the Medical Director of the Passau Clinic, the revised concepts should include a “reduction in the number of locations and clinics involved and a greater concentration of the central teaching facilities”. Some towns might not like that. In Landshut, clinics and local politicians are now concerned that the district capital of all places could be deleted as a location.
Even if the locations are reduced, another problem remains: the supply levels of the hospitals involved. Here, too, the comparison with the medical campus in Upper Franconia is lacking. There, the universities cooperate with the university clinic in Erlangen and the clinic in Bayreuth, a house with care level III, i.e. maximum care. The clinics at the Niederbayern medical campus all only have care level I or at most II. The external experts also pointed out that a second-class medical course would be created.
And the experts are also critical of the schedule – it should start in 2023. In October 2025, a new licensing regulation for medical studies will come into force. Preclinical and clinical are to be much more closely interlinked in the future. This makes the medical campus construct even more complicated. The Ministry of Science is currently examining whether the universities in Regensburg and Munich have been able to solve these problems.
But Minister Sibler has already given the route: “As a Lower Bavarian, I’m in love with success.” He expects concrete results in the first quarter of the year, after which the cabinet will soon make a decision. There will be no re-examination by experts.