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InEK publishes 2019 report on capital investment caseweights

Industry can play an important role in designing investment financing for hospitals in the future.

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Based on Section 10 of the Hospital Compensation Act (KHG), the Institute for the Remuneration System in Hospitals (InEK) has published the details of the procedure for the implementation of the reform of capital investment financing in hospitals for 2019 in a final report.

The catalogue of capital investment caseweights (IBR) is designed to serve as a tool for the investment financing on a flat-rate basis. The Länder (federal states) have the responsibility for the investment financing and may determine individually if and to which extent they use the catalogue.

The calculation of the IBR, which is carried out according to the so-called "single-house method", summarizes the investment costs of 83 reference hospitals (47 voluntary, 36 obligatory) modularly. According to the final report, the calculation data from all Länder (largest share of North Rhine-Westphalia: 25) are used, while the IBR catalogue is currently only used in the Länder Berlin and Hessen for investment financing.

"Insufficient investment financing is considered to be one of the major problems in hospital funding and reform has been called for by several stakeholders for years.

We expect that other Länder will use the IBR catalogue for capital investment financing of hospitals in the coming years. However, it is questionable how good the 83 calculation hospitals can represent the capital investment costs and whether the IBR catalogue is suitable for solving the existing investment problems. The IBR catalogue is only an instrument for distributing money in the Länder on a flat-rate basis but does not lead to a higher investment sum in general. In order to ensure that IBR funding does not create a new imbalance in hospital financing, we believe it is important that hospitals with innovative equipment – for example through expensive assistance systems such as surgical robotic systems – should be included in the calculation of the IBR catalogue in particular. This is especially important as the IBR case lump sums are calculated per DRG, but the investment costs do not play a role in DRG differentiation. From our point of view, the industry can play an important role in initiating corresponding costing projects with the relevant reference hospitals," says Dr. Habetha MPH from Healthcare Heads GbR.

If you have further questions or comments you can reach Healthcare Heads via +49 431 8001470 info@healthcareheads.com