AUSTRIA: Responding to the CoViD-19 Pandemic and Building Better Preparedness for Future Threats

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic exhibited an impact on healthcare in all countries, highlighting the need for healthcare systems to be better prepared and to improve the response to health crises and exceptional health-events. The pandemic has not only arisen new crisis-related challenges but also revealed and exacerbated existing structural problems. In Austria, the provision of sufficient protective equipment (in the beginning of the pandemic), capacity planning, shortage of health personnel, and telemedicine were important topics during the pandemic. While Austria has a very well developed health care system by international standards, it became clearer in the course of the crisis that qualified health-personnel in sufficient quantity, in particular, will be a major challenge in the future. Furthermore, the hospitalfocused system should continue to be shifted to the extramural sector, where medically sensible, in order to conserve capacity in the intramural sector. Regional differentiation on one hand and cooperation at the state level on the other hand proved useful during the crisis. In the future, more flexible capacity planning could enable resilient patient care.