"A lot can be done against the staff shortage in the healthcare sector!"

Economic Forum: Mrs. Hofmann, as the Medical Director of Policum Berlin MVZ GmbH, you bear the responsibility for one of the largest healthcare providers in the capital. What commitment distinguishes your facilities?

Katrin Hofmann: As a subsidiary of the Sanecum Group, we operate four locations in Berlin – two large multidisciplinary and two additional with a purely psychotherapeutic spectrum of services. There, we cover the entire basic medical care in twelve different specialties, with the exception of urology and gynecology, and take care of approximately 150,000 treatment cases each year.

Economic Forum: How does the strained personnel situation in the healthcare sector reflect in an organization of your size?

Katrin Hofmann: We experience this phenomenon just like any other medical facility – the challenges in filling open positions are generally increasing. Several years ago, when the full extent of this situation was just beginning to emerge, we had already systematically counteracted it, including starting a training initiative for newcomers and career changers. We can already see the first fruits of this today. Of course, the general personnel situation is not easy and has become even more challenging during the pandemic. But the success of our forward-looking measures has shown that a lot can be done to sustainably adjust to the changed conditions.

Economic Forum: What makes Policum Berlin an attractive training company?

Katrin Hofmann: A significant advantage for committed trainees is certainly our strong interdisciplinarity. Most outpatient medical facilities are usually specialized in only one discipline, so that the respective trainees can only gain experience in a single field of expertise and are furthermore tied to the particular practice for the entire two or three years of their training period. Policum Berlin, on the other hand, has designed an interdisciplinary curriculum across all fields of expertise, which our trainees systematically go through. As a result, they have the opportunity to get to know the lived medical practice in its entire breadth and subsequently make a well-informed decision about in which area they see their future professional career. At the same time, we employ the latest medical procedures from interventional gastroenterology to semi-interventional cardiology, with which we naturally want to inspire young people with a fundamental interest in medical practice in a particularly sustainable way. Also, experienced colleagues who start their activity at Policum Berlin go through a structured onboarding process with us in order to be able to integrate into our company in the best possible way and to fill our medical excellence claim with life from day one. Intensive care for all our employees by our company is an indispensable requirement for this.

Economic Forum: How has Policum Berlin experienced the Corona pandemic?

Katrin Hofmann: In the context of the enormous strain that outpatient medicine has experienced during this time, I still perceive a somewhat distorted picture in the public perception, where almost exclusively inpatient care is discussed. At the same time, however, the vast majority of Corona patients were never admitted to a hospital but were treated purely on an outpatient basis – alongside the other patient flows that naturally had to continue to be cared for. Thus, the professional, organizational, and physical burden on our staff was enormous – yet the financial and structural support we actually received was frighteningly low at times. At the height of the pandemic, I organized small vans myself and picked up essential medical products such as masks and simple protective clothing with a few employees at the distribution points – we were very much on our own. In the end, medical centers like Policum Berlin had to finance the Corona bonuses for the doctors and medical assistants out of their own pockets – which we certainly did to honor their enormous commitment at least a little. However, this picture reveals a clear discrepancy between what our sector has achieved in this difficult time and the appreciation it receives for it.

Economic Forum: How can the healthcare sector remain an attractive field of business in the outpatient sector against this backdrop in the future as well?

Katrin Hofmann: Revenues from the statutory health insurance have not been sufficient for a long time to operate economically sustainably. That's why we founded a prevention center in 2023, to systematically expand our range of services in the private medical sector. The demand for corresponding consulting services, such as in anti-aging or sports medicine, has increased significantly in recent years, so we would now like to contribute our expertise as healthcare providers close to patients in this area as well.