Hesse Health Minister Diana Stolz Visits New Triage Counter at Frankfurt Bürgerhospital

Hesse's Health Minister Diana Stolz visited Frankfurt's Bürgerhospital on Monday at 11:30 a.m. to inspect the newly installed "Gemeinsamer Tresen" — a joint triage counter that routes patients to either hospital emergency care or an outpatient on-call service. The Bürgerhospital became the fourth clinic in Hesse to adopt the model at the beginning of 2026. Armin Beck, deputy chairman of the executive board of the KV Hessen, accompanied Stolz during the visit. The two officials reviewed how the first weeks of operation had gone and examined whether the concept could serve as a national model for emergency care. The visit's invitation described the system as something that "should be a blueprint for emergency care nationwide."

Triage at the door separates emergencies from routine cases The core problem the system addresses is a structural one: in Germany, inpatient hospital care and outpatient doctor's office care remain largely separate and are billed under different frameworks. Patients who cannot get a timely appointment with a general practitioner, or who fall ill on a weekend, frequently turn to hospital emergency departments even when their condition does not require inpatient treatment. The joint counter receives all walk-in patients and those arriving by ambulance, and staff make an initial determination of whether the case belongs in the emergency room or can be handled by the outpatient sector. Patients assessed as non-emergency cases are referred to the Ärztlicher Bereitschaftsdienst, the KV-organized night and weekend on-call service for office-based doctors. Those who do require emergency treatment proceed to the hospital's emergency department waiting room in the usual way. Crucially, patients referred to the ÄBD do not need to travel elsewhere: the on-call service recently relocated from the university hospital to the Bürgerhospital itself, placing both services under one roof.

Pilot at Frankfurt-Höchst paved the way for Hesse rollout The model was first tested at Klinikum Frankfurt-Höchst, where the trial was judged to have worked well enough to warrant national expansion — an expansion that has not yet materialized. In Hesse, the system subsequently spread to Klinikum Darmstadt and Sana Klinikum Offenbach before the Bürgerhospital adopted it at the start of 2026. The slow pace of broader rollout reflects the difficulty of bridging Germany's entrenched separation between hospital and outpatient care systems. Health policy experts have long argued that patients need to be "guided into the right system" to prevent emergency departments from absorbing demand that could be handled more efficiently and cheaply in a primary care setting. The Bürgerhospital visit was framed as an opportunity to assess early results and build the case for wider adoption.

Germany's healthcare system has historically maintained a strict administrative and financial separation between inpatient hospital care and outpatient care provided by office-based physicians. This division means that hospitals and doctor's offices operate under different billing frameworks and are funded through separate channels, creating structural incentives that can push patients toward emergency departments even when their needs could be met in a primary care setting. The joint counter model attempts to address this at the point of patient entry, using triage staff to redirect non-emergency cases before they enter the hospital's emergency workflow.

Gemeinsamer Tresen rollout in Hesse: — ; — ; — ; —