Status: December 21, 2021 4:42 p.m.
From January, the prescription for medicines should be available in digital form. But the changeover has been postponed indefinitely. According to the Ministry of Health, the necessary technology is not yet widely available.
If you have statutory health insurance and need a drug, the doctor will give you the familiar pink slip of paper, which you can then redeem in the pharmacy. From 2022 things should actually work differently – primarily digitally without paper.
But the planned obligation for doctors, clinics and pharmacies to switch to the so-called e-prescription from January onwards will not work for the time being. Because electronic prescribing still has too great technical difficulties. In a letter dated December 20, the Federal Ministry of Health justified the postponement by stating that “the necessary technical systems are not yet widely available”.
The letter is addressed to the shareholders of the Gematik company responsible for the e-prescription. The company that is supposed to set up the switch to the digital prescription includes the German Medical Association, the umbrella association of statutory health insurances and the Federal Ministry of Health.
Recipe via app or as a printed QR code
The e-prescription has been planned for a long time – and that’s why it already has its own website operated by Gematik. Thereupon she advertises the advantages of the prescription in digital form: save unnecessary journeys, prescriptions should also be redeemed for relatives, a high level of data security. And patients who seek medical advice via video consultation should receive the prescription directly in digital form – and not by post, as was previously the case.
The e-prescription should either work via the specially developed app, which is already available for download and has already been downloaded tens of thousands of times. Patients can also receive a printed QR code. For the time being, there should be no digital prescription for those with private health insurance.
Tests have been going on nationwide since the beginning of the month
In order to test the conversion to the e-prescription, a pilot test was started in Berlin and Brandenburg in the summer. In October, the test phase should actually be extended to all federal states, but this step was postponed to December due to a lack of knowledge so far.
But Gematik still stuck to it in November: The e-prescription is to become mandatory from 2022 – however, the first restriction already came that this would only apply to facilities “that are technically capable”. Now the final move away from the planned start date followed.
Technical gaps should not endanger supply
In the past few weeks there had already been increasing criticism due to the lack of prerequisites for implementing the digital recipe. “The shockingly low number of successfully issued e-prescriptions shows that a real and successful test phase is missing,” said the central association of statutory health insurance companies. Klaus Reinhardt, President of the German Medical Association, was more specific: at the beginning of December, just 42 e-prescriptions were issued and successfully billed.
The decision to postpone was therefore met with approval. The federal chairman of the German Association of General Practitioners, Ulrich Weigeldt, also emphasized that the supply of pharmaceuticals should in no way be jeopardized “because the technology somehow gets stuck or data is being transmitted incorrectly”. On the other hand, the board of the German Foundation for Patient Protection, Eugen Brysch, was disappointed. He sees responsibility for the fact that the project “ran aground”, partly also with doctors. It is “precisely the medical profession who like to hold on to old braids at the expense of the patients,” said Brysch.
The new start date remains open
Gematik also appealed to “all stakeholders” to participate intensively in the nationwide test phase, according to a press release from the company. A digitization project like the e-prescription can only “work together”.
A new date, from when the obligation will come into force, has not yet been set. According to Gematik, the first quarter of the coming year will serve as a “transition period” to carry out installations and offer training. The further course of action should be coordinated with the company’s own shareholders in the coming weeks.