Only three years ago, the private hospital company Sternbach took over the former municipal hospital in Schleiz. Now the hospital is insolvent.
Another hospital in Thuringia has gone bankrupt. The Sternbach Clinic in Schleiz (Saale-Orla district) has been hit. It is now to be restructured under self-administration in order to become attractive to potential partners and investors – and thus remain a location. The hospital will continue to operate and medical care will remain “unrestricted,” according to the private hospital company.
The hospital further announced that an application for self-administration restructuring had been filed with the Gera District Court. In this special procedure, the company management is attempting to restructure the company itself. Meanwhile, the hospital has been appointed lawyer Marcello Di Stefano as provisional administrator by court order, said a spokesperson for the district court.
The Sternbach company took over the Schleiz hospital from municipal ownership in 2021. The step into self-administration became necessary because the 104-bed hospital was not yet able to cover its costs despite positive development, the clinic said in a statement. The wages and salaries of the approximately 200 employees will be paid by the employment agency over the next three months.
According to the Ministry of Health, Thuringia had attempted to support the ailing clinic before it went bankrupt. In April, the state provided a provisional default guarantee for bridging financing of two million euros, a ministry spokeswoman said on Wednesday in response to an inquiry. The state had wanted to give the hospital some breathing room to improve its financial situation. Apparently without success.
The restructuring process will now be used to organize the company's finances and find potential partners interested in a merger, the company says. The aim is to complete the restructuring by the end of the year.
The insolvency comes ahead of the federal government's upcoming hospital reform. The reform is intended to change hospital financing. The number of patients will no longer be the only decisive factor, but hospitals will receive money simply for providing certain services. The German Hospital Association has feared for months that many hospitals in precarious financial situations will not live to see this reform.
