Hospital.Help

Berlin After the first round of fee negotiations between the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV) and the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians was postponed without any results, other doctors’ associations have spoken out today. They are demanding a noticeable increase in the reference value.

The Association of General Practitioners, the Association of Specialist Doctors in Germany (Spifa), the Professional Association of Paediatricians and Adolescent Doctors (BVKJ) and Medi Baden-Württemberg pointed to the increased practice costs, especially for staff. This must be taken into account.

The associations are particularly pushing for the rising salaries of medical assistants (MFA) to be taken into account in future negotiations on the benchmark. The KBV and the GKV-Spitzenverband agreed on this last year.

The associations demanded that these announcements must now be followed by action. In 2024, MFA salaries rose by an average of 7.4 percent across all pay groups. These increases must also be fully reflected in the adjustment of the reference values.

Our employees in the practices deserve fair wages, said Nicola Buhlinger-Gpfarth and Markus Beier, Federal Chair of the Association of General Practitioners. It is therefore completely right that the salaries of MFAs are increasing.

But the money for this has to come from somewhere. The practices, which are already struggling with exploding costs for rent, energy and practice supplies, cannot cope with this on their own, they stressed. They expect the KBV and the GKV-Spitzenverband to keep their word and ensure that the tariff changes for the MFA are also reflected one-to-one in the reference value.

BVKJ Vice President Stefan Trapp added that with a fee increase of just 1.6 percent, as proposed by the health insurance companies, the economic existence of the practices is at acute risk. The offer is well below the rate of inflation. The health insurance companies are carelessly putting future, comprehensive and local patient care at risk.

If the health insurance companies wanted their insured patients to continue to find a practice that could treat them in the coming years, they would not only have to allow the practices to finance competitive MFA salaries, but they would also have to accept salary increases for doctors who could keep up with the clinic.

Good medical care in Germany is not free, especially not at a time when fewer and fewer practices have to care for more and more people, said Spifa boss Dirk Heinrich. The current development of inflation, continuous price increases for the operation of practices and also for personnel must be adequately reflected when setting the reference value.

The unequal treatment between nursing staff in hospitals and our medical assistants must finally stop, he said. Hospitals could calculate the full cost of care, regardless of the diagnosis-related flat-rate fees, and thus achieve adequate remuneration and thus better staffing levels in the nursing sector.

“We urgently need a significant increase in the reference value in order to improve our very precarious personnel situation through appropriate salaries,” explained Norbert Smetak, Chairman of Medi Baden-Württemberg. © may/aerzteblatt.de