Patients on the spot – Politicians normally want to sell us THAT

The report “Krone” about the situation in an emergency room in the AKH caused a lot of commotion. Four people are not lying in their hospital beds in the room, but in a corridor bed or on mattresses on the floor. In one person you can only see the bandaged legs on the cold linoleum.

The fact is: many Viennese did not expect such conditions in an Austrian hospital. Patient advocate Gerhard Jelinek also criticizes such “storage for ethical and hygienic reasons”. If such incidents were to become more frequent, this would be “unacceptable”.

The new normal
Nevertheless: For Austria’s leading hospital and the responsible municipal councilor for health, Peter Hacker (SPÖ), the situation is apparently quite normal. Hacker: “Of course we can talk about it. But there is a misconception that a hospital works like in TV series. Clinically clean, blonde nurses, cornetto doctors. In the hospital we have much uglier pictures in stock. People die here too. I still lack some information to get a complete picture. But this is standard procedure. And putting a patient on a mattress on the floor is a better alternative than tying him to bed. In the meantime I also have the daughter of the patient pictured called. She thanked me for the treatment.”

AKH now exchanges information with other clinics
The medical director of the AKH, Dr. Gabriela Kornek: “I am aware how disturbing these pictures must be. But I can assure you that we will only take such measures if all other more lenient measures fail. In this case, he was just lying on a mattress. In fact, in this case, the seat protector is the next level of escalation. All measures are documented and coordinated with the next of kin.”

Next level of escalation. In other words, it’s more comfortable for patients to sleep on the floor, in bright daylight, and next to complete strangers in the bed off the aisle, than next to an agency guard who monitors the sick around the clock. Kornek: “There are decisions that are not made by us. But we will also contact other teaching hospitals to find out how they proceed in such cases and whether there are any improvements.”

Comment from Michael Pommer: old and sick
It’s hard to believe this sentence will ever be written, but: if you get your hands on a gangbed, you’re lucky again. Meanwhile, in 2023, in Vienna, the most livable city in the world, patients lie on the cold linoleum floor, motionless in the bright neon light of the ceiling lamps, next to rubbish bins. A woman hangs the urine bag in the hallway, other sick people spend their lives in makeshift tents made of sheets – like the half-dead in Chinese hospitals after the corona waves. This is what multi-class medicine looks like in Vienna: the wealthy in fully air-conditioned single rooms with exclusive bathrooms, the elderly on earth. One patient was even barely protected. Even dogs get a basket.

This is normal for the clinic. SPÖ Councilor for Health Peter Hacker, otherwise no friend of restraint, will probably save his indignation for the next silly video from ÖVP Vienna boss Karl Mahrer. Healthcare is down and no one seems very upset about it. Are only old people. They are just demented. Are only those without a lobby. In all these years, not a single story has come in of a high-ranking politician, or a politician’s relative, being forced to lie in a gang bed or on the floor. The Methuselah gene seems to make them immortal.
“Do not you know who I am?” – that opens ambulance doors. So now the time has come: in Vienna you can’t get old and sick.