Medical associations and health insurance companies are arguing about the fee for the practices, and there are also more uncertainties: will there be private prescription vaccines in the future? And who then pays for the vaccine?
Much is still open when it comes to future corona vaccinations by medical practices. How the vaccine gets to the doctor’s office “has not yet been clarified”. This was announced by Detlef Haffke, spokesman for the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KV) in Lower Saxony, on request. It is also unclear whether a practice has to prescribe vaccines on a private prescription and who pays for the vaccine. The 17 KV state associations are arguing with the health insurance companies about the corona vaccination fee of the practices after the state, at the instigation of Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD), will no longer pay from Easter. An agreement is not in sight. The KV associations negotiate the fees and other things for the practices.
Is there no solution; then this usually means that medical practices temporarily apply the scale of fees for doctors, the GOÄ. “According to the GOÄ, average costs of around 60 euros are charged for vaccinations,” says Lower Saxony’s KV spokesman Haffke. The 60 euros included “the vaccine and the medical service”. According to Haffke, the doctor’s fee would then be a maximum of 21.45 euros per vaccination. That’s less than the 28 euros that the state is currently paying (36 euros on weekends). But still significantly more than the fee that medical practices receive from health insurance companies for a flu vaccination. There are between 7.60 euros in Rhineland-Palatinate and 9.18 euros in Thuringia. Several KV associations have already declared that they want to stick to the level of fees paid by the state, which the health insurance companies consider excessive and flatly reject.