Cost pressures in the hospital sector are mounting. In future, inefficient and structurally weak facilities will find it increasingly difficult to cope with these pressures. At the same time, people are becoming not less, but more demanding in what they expect from the state. The state therefore has to be very careful in allocating its financial resources as these are also urgently needed for a variety of other public tasks besides healthcare, such as education, bringing down unemployment, disaster relief and others. For this reason the number of public hospital owners looking to sell their facilities will continue to rise steadily.
When defining the terms for privatising a publicly owned and operated hospital, the decision-makers usually give top priority to the following: 

• Ensuring provision of high-quality patient care
• Securing a hospital’s viability through investments
• Existing employment contracts, in-house wage agreements, profit participation
• Allocation of purchase price/legal transfer of ownership
  

Market insiders know RHÖN-KLINIKUM AG to be a pioneer in hospital privatisation. In this role, which also carries with it a great deal of responsibility, we would like to outline our approach to the above priorities.