Funds for adults with hospitalised children
Germany - The Federal Associations of Health Insurance Funds and the German Hospitals Association are now following Germany's Regulation 1 on the co-admission of child/adolescent patients and accompanying adults.
From January this year, a universal rate of 45 euros a day has been allocated to cover extra accommodation and food for an accompanying parent, or family member or someone chosen by those with parental responsibility for the child.
‘This has finally put one of the stipulations of the Charter for Children in Hospital (agreed in 1988) into practice, said Jochen Scheel, who heads the board of the Association of Children’s Hospitals and Children’s Wards in Germany (GKinD). The co-admission of an accompanying adult in Children’s Hospitals is known to have positive effects on recovery, he said, so co-admission of an adult can always be medically justified, apart from certain admissions to paediatric psychiatric wards, or for some children with psychosomatic symptoms. ‘From our experience gained in children’s hospitals we know that the co-admission of an adult is also dependent on the state of development of each individual child and of the characteristics and severity of the illness. Up until now the admission of accompanying adults was not governed under a nationwide scheme but was handled on an individual basis, dependent on the medical insurer and location of the hospital. There rarely were any sensible or suitable solutions; in fact, things were often quite confusing and rather arbitrary. Now there’s an end to all that!’
01.03.2005
