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Heidenheim The Federal Association of General Practitioners in Diabetes (BVND) has strongly criticized the draft of the Health Care Strengthening Act (GVSG). The association fears for the existence of many diabetes specialist practices and a significant deterioration in the care of seriously ill patients.

The problems relevant to us remain in the current draft law, said BVND chairman Toralf Schwarz. As a result of the association hearing at the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG), the regulation on the annual care allowance for chronically ill people was softened. However, a practical implementation of this regulation without excessive bureaucracy in the practices appears to be extremely difficult, said Schwarz.

In particular, the planned regulation to replace the current quarterly flat-rate payments for chronic care with annual flat-rate payments is difficult. In addition, the said flat-rate payments are to be linked to certain criteria and paid out in stages.

Some of these criteria are hardly feasible for typical diabetes specialist practices. We are therefore calling for the status as a specialist practice to be included as an alternative criterion, emphasized Schwarz. The National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV) has already recognized the problem and taken it into account in its statement.

In addition, annual flat rates for multimorbid patients, people with type 1 diabetes or type 2 diabetes with secondary diseases do not reflect the reality of care. Close contact with the patients is required here. Frequent visits to the practice are necessary simply because of the regular, essential laboratory tests, said Schwarz.

Specialist practices such as those in diabetology, however, would provide care for precisely these vulnerable patients. Implementing the draft bill without significant corrections would significantly worsen their care in the medium to long term, warned Schwarz. This urgently needs to be corrected in the further legislative process. © EB/cmk/aerzteblatt.de