Germany’s health offices and their fast-track response to the COVID-19 crisis

...despite staff shortages and poor digital infrastructure

Overview

The COVID-19 pandemic is a major challenge for Germany’s health offices. Many responded quickly at the start of the pandemic by reorganising their work procedures, but staff shortages and poor digital infrastructure has made their work harder.

Background

Before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Germany’s 400+ health offices garnered little attention from politicians or the public. And yet they do vital public health work, including medical check-ups for pre-schoolers, advice on family planning and infection control. The health offices are responsible for preventing the spread of infectious diseases by quickly identifying outbreaks, tracing chains of infection and thus containing them.

Against this backdrop, their tasks as part of the COVID-19 pandemic are not new. What is new, however, is the scale of infection. The biggest problem at the moment is that many health offices were already short staffed before the pandemic broke out. Also, their digital infrastructure does not meet today’s standards.

Objectives

All health offices in Germany are required to do their bit to halt the COVID-19 pandemic. Besides advising people who have contracted the disease and managing and forwarding diagnostic test results, this includes issuing instructions to self-isolate and implementing overarching tasks, such as test and vaccination strategies and hygiene concepts. Setting up test and vaccination centres and ordering the closure of specific, critical establishments, such as cinemas and sport facilities, also forms part of the health offices' remit.

Activities

In March 2020, a health office in Berlin for instance set up a crisis team and summarily re-structured operations, enabling staff to form teams and work seven-day weeks in shifts. Each team was entrusted with a specific topic, such as diagnosis management or contract tracing.

HR support arrived in spring 2020 with the reassignment of colleagues from other departments, such as the city library or the registry office, who were freed up following the closure of their institutions to the general public. Furthermore, medical students were recruited at short notice to provide temporary assistance, and courses were quickly put together to fast-track their workplace induction.

Effects

The health authorities responded quickly and flexibly to the COVID-19 pandemic. Reorganisation and shift work especially boosted their efficiency.

However, without the right digital infrastructure, the health offices are having a hard time getting the work done. COVID-19 test results often still arrive by fax and have to be painstakingly processed by hand. Manual data entry not only takes up valuable time but is highly error prone. Also, after other offices reopened in spring following the end of lockdown, their staff were re-assigned to their original workplaces, leaving the health offices with significantly less capacity than required.

Conclusions

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that a lot of Germany's health offices are seriously understaffed. It is therefore imperative to significantly increase the number of new jobs and to align wages, for example, with those in hospitals. Offers of basic and further training should be improved and the scientific basis for research in the public health sector strengthened.

Above all, however, priority should be given to digitalising the public health system.

more information

This article is based on a presentation held on 28 September 2020 by Dr. Claudia Kaufhold as part of a virtual exchange by Connective Cities on lessons learned in the corona crisis. A public health physician, Dr. Kaufhold was director of Berlin's Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf health authority from 2001 to 2015 .

Published: 13/07/2021

Contact

Dr. Claudia Kaufhold

Lecturer for Public Health and Assessment

Academy of Public Health Services (Akademie für Öffentliches Gesundheitswesen) in Düsseldorf

claudia.kaufhold(at)bvoegd.de

 

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Categories: COVID-19 Crisis Management Public Health & Public Services Good Urban Governance Public health
Regions: Europe Germany Berlin

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