Health
Patient foundation calls for audits of German medical practices
Eugen Brysch, board member of the German Patient Protection Foundation, calls for “the quality and accessibility of practices to finally be checked externally”. photo
© Robert Michael/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa
Doctors want to guide patients through the healthcare system more efficiently. Patient advocates counter: They first want tests to see how good the individual practices actually are.
According to the German Foundation for Patient Protection, resident doctors in Germany should be independently checked for their quality and accessibility. This is what the foundation board said Eugen Brysch of the German Press Agency in Berlin before the German Doctors’ Day.
“Medical professional associations and health politicians are overflowing with suggestions for patient control,” said Brysch. “The work of practicing doctors must first be taken into account.”
In view of the shortage of doctors in parts of Germany, Medical President Klaus Reinhardt spoke out in favor of more effective use of existing capacities. The focus of the Doctors’ Day is on greater control of patients.
Doctors’ Day in Mainz
Reinhardt sees the German healthcare system as characterized by barely controlled access and unstructured utilization, as he told the dpa. “That needs to change.” The Doctors’ Day will open tomorrow in Mainz with Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD).
Brysch called for “the quality and accessibility of the practices to finally be checked externally”. It is not enough to pump more and more money into the system. “The quality of work in the private medical sector is still the big unknown,” said Brysch. Outstanding medical commitment and poor performance would be paid equally.
Brysch: System change “overdue”
Brysch called for a system change based on binding quality criteria in the outpatient sector as “overdue”. Existing rules of the statutory health insurance associations were not sufficient. Brysch called on Lauterbach to instruct the medical service of the health insurance companies to check practices for quality and presence. There are already tests for nursing facilities and hospitals.
Brysch referred to the hospital atlas, in which patients can now find information about individual clinics online. “Similar to the hospital atlas, an independent practice atlas is needed. Accompanying this, a reliable rating portal must record patient satisfaction.”