Wirtschaftsforum: Besides the statutory health insurance clinic with its emergency department, you also operate a private clinic at the location - why do patients want to have their medical procedures done at the airport?

Georg Heydn: We are an orthopedic clinic at a very special location. Nevertheless, the daily clinic operations are carried out 'normally' independent of our emergency department, and any patient can receive treatment from us. The inpatient clients specifically come to us, while the emergency treatments are traditionally outpatient. The environment is naturally very attractive: Our facilities are located directly in Terminal 1 and our patients can thus admire many takeoffs and landings from their rooms - this takes a bit of the annoyance away, especially during unplanned treatments while traveling. However, despite this nice feature, it is ultimately the first-class competence of our medical staff and our nursing personnel which is crucial for our attractiveness as a healthcare provider - for this reason, our clinics have been able to establish a top-notch reputation over the more than two decades of their existence. Our exciting location also makes it a bit easier for us to recruit staff - so we can always depend on certified personnel for all our nursing staff, which in turn contributes to our proven medical excellence.

Wirtschaftsforum: What changes are currently shaping the everyday life in your healthcare facilities?

Georg Heydn: To continue ensuring the best possible treatment of our patients, we are constantly exploring which medical-strategic direction is the most sensible for us. We will certainly expand our service offering - recently, for example, we have also started providing knee joint replacement procedures, which necessitated the establishment of entirely new processes for admissions, in the OR, on the ward, and in billing. Because introducing new services is never trivial. Unfortunately, looking into the future is currently difficult due to the impending hospital reform. That this amendment will likely result in more rather than less bureaucracy can, however, be predicted with considerable certainty already now.

Wirtschaftsforum: Mr. Heydn, with the private clinic Munich AirportClinic GmbH and the public health clinic MediCare Flughafen München Medizinisches Zentrum GmbH, you aim to provide high-tech medicine with an international flair – at the largest airport in Southern Germany. What special challenges do you have to manage in your daily operations?

Georg Heydn: Ultimately, our service stands or falls with its medical excellence, and our utmost goal is always to achieve the best possible outcome for each patient – so in this respect, we are no different from any other clinic. However, our unique location right at the airport is indeed a very special feature and brings with it questions on various levels that one might seldom encounter elsewhere in medical practice. This starts with seemingly trivial issues like describing the location for emergencies. In everyday life, when you make an emergency call, you just need to give a specific address, and within a few minutes, paramedics and the emergency doctor arrive at Fichtenweg 9 or Kohlgasse 13. Here at the airport, with its many different levels and extensive areas, it's significantly more complicated.

Wirtschaftsforum: Conducting medical procedures under these special environmental conditions must be quite complex.

Georg Heydn: When an emergency situation occurs in an airplane, the rescue operation is additionally complicated by the very cramped space. There are also high safety requirements along with the accompanying bureaucratic requirements, such as the IDs our staff must have on hand. However, the medical care itself does not differ from the interventions or procedures in other facilities. I like to compare us to the fire brigade: Factory fire brigades too must work under different conditions compared to a unit in the local street – but the fundamental task is identical: extinguishing fires.

Wirtschaftsforum: However, you will have to deal with problems in your daily routine that hardly any other clinic manager is likely to encounter.

Georg Heydn: That's true – and it makes this activity extraordinarily appealing to me, which is why I was very pleased when I was allowed to take over as managing director here a few months ago. Since then, I indeed had to deal with various topics that I had never thought of before. Imagine, for instance, an emergency with ongoing resuscitation on a plane that has just arrived from China – but the patient does not have a Schengen visa because she wanted to fly directly to the USA as a transit passenger. Now, she has to be treated here in our clinic – and for that, she actually needs to enter the country. How can we act correctly in such a situation? This is an extremely exciting question for me – and it underlines how important our close cooperation with all other entities at the airport is, including with the federal police, among others.