Vienna fights against operating waiting times: private clinics ready for use!

Vienna fights against operating waiting times: private clinics ready for use!

The 68th Wiener municipal council met on Wednesday, April 23, 2025, at 9 a.m. and discussed the current waiting times for operations in urban hospitals. Health City Councilor Peter Hacker (SPÖ) made it clear that 44% of the 140,000 operations annual are acute interventions that are carried out without waiting. This corresponds to about 61,000 acute interventions per year or 168 emergency operations every day. Hacker emphasized that Vienna had the shortest waiting times compared to other federal states. Nevertheless, the issue of planning of interventions remains an important concern for urban politics in view of the increasing number of patients and the operating room backlog, especially after covid pandemic.

An important aspect of the discussion was the need to actively contact patients who are waiting for predictable operations. These waiting times have extended in recent years, especially for hip and knee operations, where patients sometimes have to wait up to seven times longer than five years ago. In order to counteract this, the Vienna Health Association (Wigev) relies on cooperation with private clinics such as Premiqamed to expand the capacities and to shorten the waiting times. courier reports that this measure also attracts the private clinics of confaternity and golden cross in order to carry out predictable interventions.

Cooperation to optimize health care

The city of Vienna has already successfully worked with the Premiqamed private clinics during the Covid pandemic. Information from wien.gv.at show that this was carried out by over 2,400 predictable interventions of WigEV clinics in private hospitals between 2020 and 2022. The focus is particularly on orthopedics, general surgery, HNO, urology and breast surgery. This cooperation should not only maximize the capacities in public healthcare, but also ensure that patients are treated free of charge, without administrative effort or additional costs.

Despite these measures, there are also critical voices. The health spokeswoman for the People's Party, Ingrid Korosec, sees the cooperation a sign of the failure of the city government, while Barbara Huemer from the Greens criticizes the plan as "way to the dead end". It describes the measures as a "cheap election sugar", now that the city has recognized the urgency of the problem. Ots According to this critical discourse, this critical discourse will continue to be managed in Vienna's city policy.

In addition to health care, the local council also discussed other topics such as the integration of young people in democratic processes. Vice Mayor Bettina Emmerling informed about the pilot project "Democracy Schools", which includes 360,000 children and young people in Vienna as important players. Her ideas flow into the new child and youth strategy that is already in the works.

In summary, it can be said that Vienna is actively working on improving health care on several levels. These efforts should not only reduce waiting times for patients, but also strengthen the participation of young people in political decision -making processes.