Health
Better conditions for family doctor practices in the cabinet
Better working conditions are intended to help maintain the network of general practitioner practices with a view to the coming wave of retirements. photo
© Stephan Jansen/dpa
Waiting times, stress, orphaned practices in the countryside: the healthcare network is strained in many places. A law should counteract this – probably with ideas that are not yet included.
General practitioners are usually the first point of contact for insured persons and guides in the health system, the draft states. “They are able to treat the majority of medical complaints competently and quickly.” They also help to reduce the use of more expensive structures such as emergency rooms in hospitals. The field should therefore become “financially more attractive in the long term” in order to meet the increasing need for young general practitioners.
Key points of the plans at a glance:
compensation
For general practitioners – as with pediatricians – usual upper limits on remuneration should be lifted. This means that they will definitely get paid for extra work, even if the budget is exhausted. This is likely to result in additional costs for statutory health insurance companies in the “low three-digit million range”, as the ministry estimates.
New packages
There will also be an annual “flat rate” for practices to treat chronically ill people who constantly take medication. This is intended to avoid visits to the practice every quarter just to get prescriptions and create more freedom overall. Practices that meet certain criteria that have yet to be determined will receive a new “reserve fee” – for example for home and nursing home visits or opening hours including evenings and Saturdays.
The retirement wave
There has been no recent decline in the number of general practitioners. At the end of last year, according to the Federal Medical Register, there were 51,389, 75 more than at the end of 2022. Ten years earlier, however, there were 52,262. And if more and more retire, there is a risk of a shortage, especially in western Germany, warned the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians. Among general practitioners, the proportion of people over 60 is particularly high at 37 percent.
teenagers
According to the draft, psychotherapeutic offers for children and young people should also be improved. For this purpose, a new group of doctors should be formed to plan needs. This enables “more targeted control of branch options” for corresponding practices.
transparency
A digital information and comparison service is to be created for those with statutory health and nursing care insurance, as the draft states. Numbers on approvals, rejections and objections to certain health insurance benefits should be available there – but also on processing times and the quality of advice and support offers.
Medical care centers
It should be easier for municipalities to set up medical care centers (MVZ) in which doctors work under one roof – among other things with relief in the amount of necessary security payments.
In the waiting line
In order to get the project underway, Lauterbach has identified a number of points that were controversial within the coalition. However, they will be brought up again in the parliamentary deliberations. These include “health kiosks”, i.e. easily accessible advice centres for treatment and prevention in areas with many socially disadvantaged people. Lauterbach also wants to campaign for an end to homeopathic services at the expense of health insurance companies. These are treatments that do not work, he argued. The health insurance companies should not pay for them.