The dean of the Berlin Charité, Axel Radlach Pries, is leaving his post at the end of the year. As a spokesman for the state-owned university clinic said on request, Pries is retiring after eight years in office for family reasons. The position was advertised in April and the applications are now being evaluated.

The faculty council will probably elect a new dean on the basis of the Berlin University Medicine Act in July. As head of the faculty, i.e. the scientific operation of the large hospital, the dean is formally responsible for 2000 researchers and more than 8000 students.

Pries, 68 years old, is a professor of physiology, has headed the Charité faculty since 2015 and has so far also been a member of the clinic’s board of directors headed by Heyo Kroemer. In addition, Pries is the honorary chairman of the World Health Summit. The forum, usually abbreviated to WHS, was founded in 2009 as a congress for doctors, business representatives and politicians by Detlev Ganten, the former head of the Charité. The WHS campaigned for international vaccination justice during the corona pandemic.

Whoever takes over as the new dean must ultimately be confirmed by the Charité supervisory board, which is chaired by Ulrike Gote (Greens), Senator for Health and Science. It is not the only top position in Berlin’s healthcare system that is being filled. CFO Eibo Krahmer will soon be leaving the Vivantes clinics, which are also state-owned. The business IT specialist Krahmer has been a member of the Vivantes Executive Board since 2015.

Vivantes boss is Johannes Danckert, albeit “temporarily”, which is increasingly causing resentment in hospital circles. Dankert should, so the gentle request, be able to do his job without restrictions. The Vivantes supervisory board, which includes Gote, finance senator Daniel Wesener (Greens), will have to decide on this as well as on a new chief financial officer, who is being searched for in these weeks.

At the request of the Senate, the Charité and Vivantes clinics are to cooperate more closely. The Charité is currently negotiating the working conditions and salaries of the doctors, the Marburger Bund is meeting with the HR manager of the clinic, Carla Eysel. In the Vivantes chain, on the other hand, there is a dispute over the collective agreement that was struck in 2021. Verdi accuses the group management of not paying out agreed wage increases in the Vivantes subsidiaries: The union speaks to Vivantes HR manager Dorothea Schmidt.