The hallway is dark, the rooms are rather small, and the furnishings cannot keep up with the styled practice rooms that are often found in Munich. There are also no works of art on the walls. On the ground floor of Streitfeldstraße 1 in Berg am Laim, it’s not about impressing well-heeled private patients with a classy ambience and getting them enthusiastic about one or the other individual health service that is not paid for by statutory health insurance. The people who come to Malteser Medizin München (MMM) seek medical help because they are in pain and ill, but neither have health insurance nor can they pay for the treatment out of their own pockets.
As sober as the appearance may seem, the reception by the full-time and voluntary employees in the team is just as warm-hearted. The new MMM manager, Veronika Majaura, lends a hand when the drawer containing the blood pressure monitor is jammed. The 29-year-old ethnologist worked as a working student in the refugee sector, after which she headed Benefit, a counseling project for refugee women from the Catholic Women’s Social Service (SkF). “We went to community accommodation, offered leisure activities there and provided information about the school system and health care.” Funding for the project ran out at the end of 2020.
After further positions in refugee counseling, Majaura came to MMM at the beginning of the year, where she has now taken over the management of the team. She is in the process of completing her master’s degree in social management while working. In her small office, the walls are still bare. The gurgle of the suction device can be heard from the room across the way, where dentists from the Bavarian Dental Medicine Aid are treating patients who are not insured free of charge. Last year there were 475 dental treatments. Just a few meters further is the doctor’s office. No appointment is required on the two consultation days, Tuesday morning and Thursday afternoon. “We allow ourselves flexibility,” says Majaura, especially since the understanding of time is not influenced by Western Europe everywhere.
Last year, Malteser Medizin Munich recorded a total of 1100 treatments (2019: 900), a new record. Never before has so many people without insurance been able to get medical help, says Veronika Majaura. 528 new patients came to the consultation in 2022. If you want, you can remain anonymous. At the first appointment, a short social anamnesis is taken. “We want to see if anyone can get health insurance back,” says Majaura. “We don’t just want to treat symptoms. It’s never just about physical health because we know that people often have many other problems.” Social counseling and migration counseling take care of them.
The help for people who, for a variety of reasons, do not have health insurance and cannot pay for treatment out of their own pocket, was established in 2006 with municipal funding under the name Malteser Migranten Medizin. It is now called Malteser Medizin München. Almost every sixth person treated without health insurance has a German passport.
It is often the self-employed who, for example due to insolvency, can no longer pay their contributions to private health insurance, which means that health insurance benefits are suspended. There is a close working relationship with the Condrobs health clearinghouse to get people back on health insurance, but this is subject to many conditions. “It always works,” says Majaura. But despite compulsory insurance, the number of uninsured Germans has grown significantly.
The MMM is also often asked to bridge gaps. For example last year, when the first refugees from Ukraine came until they were registered and social benefits started. The situation is similar for the newly arrived Afghan local workers, who often had to wait a long time for their health insurance cards. Just under 16 percent of the patients treated do not have a secure residence status in Germany.
In the doctor’s office, doctor Eberhard Köhl examines the patients on a voluntary basis.
(Photo: Stephan Rumpf)
Nurse Cordula Zickgraf takes care of patients in the waiting room on a voluntary basis.
(Photo: Stephan Rumpf)
“We offer basic medical care,” says doctor Eberhard Köhl, one of around 50 volunteers from various professions who are involved with MMM. For people without health insurance, “regardless of where they come from, which religion, which skin color and which sex, people are treated here when they are ill”. Köhl, who ran a medical practice in the Ebersberg district for 30 years, came to MMM four years ago via the volunteer fair to do something good. “You can help, it’s a fulfilling job.”
Since then he has held voluntary consultation hours at Malteser Medizin for people without health insurance. Together with the nurse Cordula Zickgraf, 69, who also works on a voluntary basis, the 77-year-old forms a well-established team. The pensioner has been there for two years and says it is important to her to support an institution that does good work. Patients often come with gastrointestinal diseases, but also with high blood pressure and diabetes, injuries and sprains, colds and fever.
Köhl and Zickgraf agree that their patients are more grateful than is usual in a practice. Köhl sees a huge difference in the treatment options. Although they have ECG and ultrasound, they don’t have a specialist area, apart from gynecological and pediatric consultations. Unfortunately, only a few specialists are willing to slip in an MMM patient free of charge, regrets Cordula Zickgraf. Admission to a hospital is also not that easy, says Köhl. This is because clinics are reluctant to accept patients for whom the financing of the costs has not been clarified, although they are obliged to do so in an emergency.