Status: 04/12/2023 4:48 p.m
The proposal by Kassenärzte boss Gassen to demand an emergency room fee under certain conditions is met with opposition. Health Minister Lauterbach sees no chance of implementation.
Health Minister Karl Lauterbach has rejected Andreas Gassen, head of statutory health insurance doctors, for an emergency room fee. The restructuring of emergency care is being intensively discussed – but not about a fee, which is why the proposal has no prospect of being implemented, he said.
Gassen had advocated that patients should pay a fee if they go directly to the emergency room without first calling the control center and without it being necessary: “Anyone who can still go to an emergency room themselves is often not a real medical doctor Emergency,” Gassen told the editorial network Germany. The bottom line is that this costs the solidarity community more money and ties up medical resources unnecessarily.
Massive criticism from professional associations
The German Foundation for Patient Protection criticized the initiative. The proposal was unjustified, said foundation board member Eugen Brysch. “Because there can be no question of mass abuse of the emergency rooms. After all, almost every second person would turn to the medical on-call service for non-life-threatening complaints.”
Patients are often unable to interpret the severity of their symptoms. It is also often difficult for physicians to make a non-specialist diagnosis. “That’s why the associations of panel doctors have to do their homework first,” Brysch demanded. In addition to the expansion and specialization of the medical on-call service, this also applies to adequate opening times for the established medical practices and the offer of home visits.
Gerald Gaß, CEO of the German Hospital Society (DKG), said, “when we talk about sanctions, the conditions must first be met to ensure that all patients in an emergency situation are given ideal advice and management. But in such a situation we are not yet.”
The president of the social association VdK, Verena Bentele, described Gassen’s proposal as surprising. In her experience, the medical on-call service of the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians quickly referred sick people to the emergency room, “since it is obviously not optimally staffed.” Bentele also rejects a fee.
Politicians likewise give fee collection
Dietmar Bartsch, chairman of the parliamentary group Die Linke in the Bundestag, also expressed criticism of the initiative. Emergency rooms are hopelessly overwhelmed, but blaming patients for it borders on shabbiness, the politician wrote on Twitter. He called for a “180 degree turn away from profit thinking in health policy”. Hospitals don’t have to pay off first and foremost, they have to make people healthy.
Green health politician Janosch Dahmen dismissed the proposal for an emergency room fee as “misleading and dangerous”. “People with an acute medical problem need to be able to rely on the fact that they will always be helped in the emergency room, regardless of the budget,” he said.