AOK plans censorship for doctors

In an online survey, the health insurance AOK wants to award censorship for home and specialist doctors.

(07.09.2010) AOK health insured persons will be able to award grades from 2011 for their GPs and specialists. Insured persons can participate in an online survey of the AOK website. The rating portal should apply to the federal state of Saxony. The AOK expects the project to make it easier for citizens to find a doctor and get a good overview. About two million AOK members are called to rate their doctors.

On the Internet, there are now numerous review portals. Why should not patients also rate their doctors? This is also the general local health insurance AOK Saxony and introduces from 2011 an online assessment portal for doctors. The offer will initially apply to AOK health insurance. According to AOK spokeswoman Hannelore Strobel, the aim of the survey is to help the insured with the doctor search. However, the portal should not be a "medical TÜV," as critics repeatedly cite. So said Strobel: "From medical TÜV can be no question." Beginning in January 2011, AOK-Plus insured persons can distribute grades from 1 to 6 for setting up the practice, staff, appointment, waiting times and medical treatment.

Similar rating portals have already been launched in other federal states. At the beginning of the year, the AOK set up an online rating portal, the "AOK Hospital Navigator". Patients were able to search and evaluate clinics for knee, hip and thigh surgery. So far, about 200 hospitals from the regions of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein and Westfalen-Lippe can be listed.

A so-called AOK physician navigator was also launched for the states of Berlin, Hamburg and Thuringia in the spring. In autumn 2010, the first evaluation results will be published. But the response of the insured was so far poor, as the AOK Thuringia reported.

Zweifel announces the Independent Patient Counseling in Leipzig. Here one considers a quality information about doctors necessary, but doubts the validity of such surveys. Ulrike Dzengel of Independent Patient Counseling said: "There can be no reliable statements here". Because such reviews are very subjective and therefore too inaccurate. In addition, the patients are dependent on the doctors on site.

The Kassenärztliche Vereinigung Sachsen is in principle not against such a doctors review portal. But here you see the danger that especially dissatisfied patients rate their last visit to the doctor. „Presumably, patients taking part in the grading, who for various reasons were dissatisfied with their visit to the practice, "argued Klaus Heckemann of the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (Kassenärztliche Vereinigung), who also saw the danger that physicians with very good grades would experience a mass influx that would not cope with everyday life can be.

The rating portal will initially start in Saxony. However, it is planned to expand the project nationwide. When there will be a nationwide online assessment portal for doctors is still unclear. Actually, the nationwide project should start already in autumn 2010. From this date, however, one has moved away. (Sb)

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Image: Christoph Droste