Editorial by the Management Board

The past year has once again put our company, as well as the entire healthcare sector, to the test. We are living in times of crisis. The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine is still ongoing and the economic situation continues to be burdened by the significant rise in energy costs and persistently high inflation. All of this has also had a noticeable impact on German hospitals. At the same time, there is still a lack of the necessary and legally prescribed government investment to successfully overcome all of these challenges.

The German healthcare system is at an important turning point. Unfortunately, however, the politicians’ current behaviour is not helping to set the course for stability and improvement. The timetable for implementing the hospital reform has not yet been finalised and leaves many questions regarding implementation unanswered. The main problems of underfunding, over-bureaucratisation and the shortage of specialists are not addressed by the hospital reform in its current form. There is a threat of structural change that puts the stability of the healthcare system at risk. In order to support those who are speaking out in this debate, we have championed the “krankenhausretten.de” hospital reform campaign of the Bundesverband Deutscher Privatkliniken (Federal Association of German Private Clinics). Everyone involved must come to the table and take on responsibility.

Despite these difficult framework conditions, Asklepios has once again demonstrated resilience and is on a solid financial footing. Last year, we benefited from our forward-looking actions and managed our business sustainably. As a result, we are flexible enough to respond to changing framework conditions and master even challenging times. In the 2023 financial year, Asklepios generated revenue of EUR 5,452.3 million and consolidated net income for the year of EUR 135.7 million. The Group’s equity ratio was 29.4%.

Almost 3.5 million patients placed their trust in us and visited our hospitals for treatment, 2.7 million of them on an outpatient basis. They were all able to rely on excellent, high-quality care from our 68,000 employees.

The positive development of our company would not be possible without the tireless commitment of our employees to the well-being of our patients. As the Management Board of Asklepios Kliniken, we would like to express our sincere thanks for this special commitment. With the title of “VisioNear” for this year’s annual report, we would like to pay tribute to the daily work of our employees and show you, dear readers, what our colleagues do every day. Because they are all “VisioNears”: close to our patients and committed to the modern healthcare of tomorrow.

Our aspiration is to always be easily accessible for our patients. Not just in the cities, but in rural regions too. To do this, we need qualified employees – no easy task in times of a shortage of skilled workers. This is why we are continuing to pursue our strategy of recruiting qualified specialists from abroad in a targeted manner – a matter of course for us, with which we are consciously positioning ourselves against right-wing populist tendencies and thus relying on a diverse team. With our own integration concept and a success rate of around 95%, we are counteracting the shortage of skilled workers, particularly in the care sector. People from 36 nations now work in our facilities.

We always look ahead and, as VisioNears, we are leading the way in offering our patients first-class treatment along the medical supply chain. Among other things, we are committed to new ways of providing healthcare. Patients who need an artificial hip or knee joint are faced with a major operation, lengthy treatment and many uncertainties. To increase the chances of success, Asklepios is focusing on a new approach – and is at the patient’s side throughout the entire treatment. By improving the quality of care and making more efficient use of resources, we ultimately also reduce treatment costs – a process that benefits everyone involved.

The targeted use of artificial intelligence (AI) promises further improvements for the care of our patients. We are convinced that AI will be an integral part of healthcare in the future. We are already implementing advanced concepts for modern, pioneering healthcare with our research and the use of AI. The driving force behind this pioneering work is our employees. They are enthusiastic about the future of healthcare, inspire those around them and make us as a company a pioneer of visionary healthcare.

The use of AI in conjunction with pseudonymised medical data promises enormous potential for medical research. Thanks to our almost 40 years of experience, Asklepios has a huge amount of medical data at its disposal. In digitised form, this data will soon form the basis for medical research in the Medical Data Warehouse and enable a completely new understanding of disease and therapy. The Medical Data Warehouse is therefore an important forward-looking project for Asklepios. Developed in-house by our employees, we can use the platform to link and evaluate data from various sources in order to detect diseases earlier and enable tailor-made therapies.

Our pursuit of medical excellence and the sustainable improvement of the healthcare system are our top priorities. We are committed to innovation and support medical research. In doing so, we remain true to the principles of our founder and former shareholder Bernard große Broermann and act with foresight, vision and a clear-cut strategy. The death of Dr große Broermann in February 2024 touched us deeply, but at the same time made it clear to us once again how much the strength of our company is based on his strong values and clearly defined vision. The network of efficient healthcare facilities he built up creates a reliability that enables us to provide our patients with comprehensive and safe care even in uncertain times. We are therefore cautiously optimistic about the new year as well and are determined to continue Bernard große Broermann’s legacy.

Today, as in the future, we want our patients not only to get healthy, but above all to stay healthy. In our Annual Report for 2023, we show you how we are working to achieve this.