Hospital.Help

Berlin The Virchowbund has called for better management of patients in the German healthcare system in order to prevent rationing of healthcare. If we don’t manage patients better, we will have a waiting list for operations and practice appointments in Germany. And that is nothing other than rationing, said the federal chairman of the Virchowbund, Dirk Heinrich, today at the association’s general meeting in Berlin.

Heinrich spoke out in favor of introducing different optional tariffs for health insurance companies. If patients decide to be managed by a coordinating family doctor or specialist as their primary doctor, they do not have to pay any co-payment, he explained.

If you still want a free choice of doctor without control, you will have to pay a co-payment. In this way, unhindered access to the system can be slowed down. Today it is a big problem that many people with a cold clog up open consultation hours in practices.

We doctors must be freed from such banalities in order to have more time for patients who are really sick, said the Virchowbund chairman.

More personal responsibility

The impartial chairman of the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA), Josef Hecken, also spoke out in favor of the introduction of patient control. With a view to the financing ability of the health system, politicians should think about whether they would like to think about a practice fee in a different form, said Hecken. We cannot achieve patient control by asking people to only go to the doctor when they really have to.

It is appropriate to demand personal responsibility from patients, which is expressed through some form of participation in every use of services. This must be designed in a socially acceptable manner. However, socially acceptable does not mean that the deductible can be reduced to zero, says Hecken.

The question is: are we treating the right people? The answer is: No, we are not doing that, explained the G-BA chairman. 20 to 30 percent of the use of medical services is not medically indicated. They come about because patients subjectively feel unwell and say: I need medical treatment. These are outreach doctor-patient contacts that are not necessary at the end of the day. These treatments blocked care for patients who truly need medical attention.

Discrimination against residents

Hecken spoke out in favor of strengthening outpatient care: We can only guarantee comprehensive health care for the population if we have a strong branch of general practitioners and specialists. This is the backbone of all sensible medical care.

According to Hecken, the political goal of Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) was to ensure that as many services as possible were provided in inpatient and semi-inpatient facilities and to promote the corresponding facilities. From my point of view, it was a planned approach to relocate specialist medical care to hospitals, said Hecken. Against this background, I have noticed widespread discrimination against practicing doctors in recent years.

Clear commitment to freelancing

When the traffic light coalition collapsed, Heinrich said he was happy that the time of bashing and disregard by Lauterbach was now coming to an end. Heinrich hopes that the next federal government will make a clear commitment to self-administration and medical freelance work. The basic mistake of the traffic light coalition in the health sector was that it allowed Lauterbach to pursue a hidden agenda on state medicine.

Heinrich said that the last three years had been the most difficult in his professional political career because, unlike all his predecessors since Ulla Schmidt (SPD), it was very difficult to be able to hold discussions at Lauterbach.

Different way of communication

The Union parliamentary group’s health policy spokesman, Tino Sorge, announced that the CDU wanted to have a different type of communication with the medical profession if they were to head the Ministry of Health. He also emphasized that there is no need to start from scratch when it comes to legislation in the next legislative period.

The Health Care Improvement Act that was originally presented contained many good things, but some of them were removed during the course of the process. With regard to de-budgeting, one can build on this to have a structured debate in which not only individual groups of doctors are involved, said Sorge.

In contrast to Christian Bartelt from the FDP, Sorge ruled out voting together with the SPD and the Greens for ongoing legislative processes in this legislative period. Bartelt had explained that he could imagine that the FDP parliamentary group, for example, would vote for the announced and sensible de-bureaucratization law.

Sorge, on the other hand, advocated tackling de-bureaucratization anew in the new legislative period. Ultimately, the traffic light coalition had enough time to pass the de-bureaucratization law during this government period. © fos/aerzteblatt.de