In Germany, around 12.4 million emergency cases were treated in hospitals in the year 2023, the highest number since record-keeping began in 2018, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) reported on Monday.
In the hospital emergency departments, an average of around 34,000 people were treated daily, as a comparison: the total number of in-patient treatment cases in 2023 was around 17.2 million.
The COVID-19 pandemic had led to a decline in the number of cases in emergency departments. Patients apparently avoided visiting emergency departments if possible, and it is likely that the reduction in mobility also led to fewer accidents. In 2020, the number of emergency treatments was at the lowest level since 2018, with a total of 9.4 million, and since then, the treated emergency cases have been increasing continuously each year.
Besides the clinical emergency department, the rescue service is an important component of emergency care. Around 86,000 people were employed in the rescue service in Germany in 2022, plus numerous volunteers. The number of full-time rescue service employees increased by 71 percent in ten years, from around 50,000 in 2012, of whom 36,000 were full-time and 14,000 part-time or temporarily employed.
From 2012 to 2022, the number of full-time and part-time rescue service employees increased by 18,000 (full-time employees +49 percent, part-time and temporarily employed +129 percent). This meant that the growth in the rescue service was more pronounced than in the healthcare sector as a whole, where the number of employees increased by 19 percent in the same period. Despite the strong increase, the demand for skilled workers in the rescue service remains high. The Federal Employment Agency classifies rescue professions as so-called bottleneck occupations.
Men are particularly overrepresented in the rescue service in Germany, with two-thirds (66 percent) of employees in the rescue service in 2022 being male, although the proportion of women has been rising from 27 percent in 2012 to 34 percent in 2022. In the healthcare sector as a whole, the picture is different, with a majority of women (75 percent) and only one-quarter (25 percent) being men in 2022.