The Regional Database Germany has published data on the local healthcare economy for the first time: In the first pandemic year 2020, healthcare spending in Berlin was around 20 billion euros. This meant that costs had risen by 7.7 percent compared with the previous year; these amounted to around 18.6 billion euros in 2019. In Brandenburg, spending in 2020 was around 14.3 billion euros. These had increased by 6.6 percent; in 2019, these were around 13.4 billion euros.

Statutory health insurance accounted for the largest share of spending in each case, at around 55 percent in Berlin and around 58 percent in Brandenburg. The number of health care workers had increased successively in both states since 2008: in 2020, about 258,000 people worked in the health care sector in Berlin and about 154,000 in Brandenburg. Nationwide statistics show that the number of employees had risen further across Germany in 2021, to a total of six million people. The data from the Regional Database Germany relate only to the period from 2008 to 2020.

In social long-term care insurance, expenditure in Berlin amounted to around two billion euros in 2019. In 2020, these were around 200 million euros higher. In Brandenburg, spending was around 1.6 billion euros in 2019 and had risen to 1.8 billion euros in 2020.

Photo by Stock Birken