Home Fresenius Group Business Segments Fresenius Helios

	2006 Sales	Beds
Überlingen Hospital, Lake Constance	~ € 22 million	191
St. Elisabeth Hospital, Oberhausen	~ € 20 million	203
Lengerich Hospital	~ € 12 million	130
Krefeld Clinic/ Cäcilien Hospital Hüls	~ € 175 million	1,205

With 3,300 employees, the two clinics achieved sales of around € 175 million in 2006. First consolidation in the Fresenius Group’s balance sheet was on December 31, 2007.

In addition, HELIOS acquired another three hospitals in Germany: the Überlingen Hospital on Lake Constance, the St. Elisabeth Hospital in Oberhausen and the Lengerich Hospital. These hospitals achieved sales of € 54 million in 2006. Together, they have more than 520 beds.

In the German hospital market, the privatization of hospitals owned by the public sector or independent nonprofit organizations slightly slowed down in 2007. The improved macroeconomic climate in Germany helped in some cases to ease the pressure on municipal government and local authority budgets to some extent. This short-term relief, however, circumvents the still urgent need for new investment in public hospitals and ignores their continued poor economic situation. Experts expect the privatization of hospitals in Germany to pick up again in 2008. As an experienced partner in the German hospital market, HELIOS is excellently positioned for making further acquisitions.

GOAL: BEST-IN-CLASS MEDICAL RESULTS

In 2007, HELIOS continued with its successful program for improving the quality of its medical results. A unique quality management system, developed in-house, assures continuous improvement in the standards of patient care. For more information on quality management, please see the Management Report.

HELIOS has been working with the National AOK Association, the AOK research institute (Wldo) and the State of Sachsen-Anhalt Welfare and Health Department (FEISA) research institute to develop a methodology for quality measurement, building on HELIOS processes, that would also be suitable for health insurers. Since health insurers have very extensive databases containing considerable data on long-term medical histories, this prospect opens up much wider-reaching possibilities for quality measurement than can be obtained from the hospitals. Using the data available to the public health insurers, the methodology can examine the long-term results of inpatient care far beyond the individual hospital stay. The project partners completed the necessary technical developments at the beginning of 2007. It is expected that in the first half of 2008 the National AOK Association will introduce reports based on this method that will be made available to all hospitals.

We are therefore not only meeting the challenge of quality competition but also exposing ourselves to external scrutiny by the health insurers. This places high demands on our employees, but, in an increasingly competitive environment, will assure the long-term viability of our clinics.

Obviously, continuous quality improvement at HELIOS also requires an optimal cost-effective organization of the processes and the treatment procedures at our clinics. In 2008, we will continue to work toward our goal of achieving levels of treatment quality in all major areas that are higher than the German average and even generally accepted international standards.

For information on advances achieved in the treatment of stroke patients please see Progress at Fresenius Helios of this Annual Report.

You will find more information on the German hospital market in the Management Report and in the Outlook section of the Management Report.