Poor people can not pay for doctor's visits

More and more people can not pay for medical visits

29/06/2011

The cost of medical fees and co-payments for medication and remedies keeps many people from going to the doctor. Often sufferers can not afford the necessary medical visits and therefore seek help with social projects that offer free medical care, so the result of an accompanying study to a corresponding project in Hannover.

People in Germany can not afford the required doctor visits and medical treatments. Practice fees and co-payments are, according to the medical chamber chairwoman of the district office Hanover, Cornelia Goesmann, the reason that more and more people visit the originally set up for homeless, free medical consultation. Goesmann refers to their data on a nationwide companion study, which evaluates the patient treatments of a social project in Hanover for ten years.

Social project offers free medical exams
The social project of the free medical consultations were originally set up in Hannover 1999 for the homeless. Meanwhile, people who do not live on the streets are always looking for support in the project, which was supported by, among others, Caritas and Diakonie, according to the result of an accompanying study that has been running in Hanover for ten years. The reason for this is the cost of practice fees and co-payments, explained Cornelia Goesmann. In view of the available study results, the chairpersons of the medical chamber district office Hanover demanded a general abolition of the practice fees as well as a free payment of the remedies and medicines to the financially needy. Although today 60 percent of the patients of the free medical consultation live in their own apartment and 30 percent are housed in homes for homeless people, but their financial resources do not allow them the necessary visits to the doctor or the acquisition of the necessary drugs, the result of the accompanying study. Only six percent of the patients who were cared for by the volunteers and caregivers last year as part of the homeless project were still living on the streets.

900 patients a year at free medical consultation in Hannover
The Accompanying Study of the Social Project, developed by the Center for Quality and Health Management (ZQ), evaluated some 16,000 free medical treatments, with the number of patients having risen by about 50 percent since the year 2000. In recent years, an average of around 900 patients were cared for annually by the volunteers of the social project. Over the years, the complaints of patients have changed significantly, the experts report. While at first mainly skin diseases and injuries were in the foreground, nowadays more than 50 percent of the free consultation hours involve mental illness or addiction problems among the patients. The volunteer doctors are keen to make the transfers to a regular practice, but whether this is successful, can hardly be determined on the basis of the available study results. According to Cornelia Goesmann, however, there are indications that „the so-called poverty population can no longer afford the normal doctor's visit“ can. Therefore, it remains doubtful whether the patients have visited a regular practice after attending the free medical consultation. According to the experts, those concerned are simply overburdened financially by the due fees for the practice and additional payments for medicines and remedies.

Abolition of the practice fee and co-payments required
Comparable projects like those in Hanover run in numerous German cities, but the scientific investigation through a ten-year accompanying study is unique in Germany, said the chairman of the Medical Association District Office Hannover. The capital of Lower Saxony is „become a hub on the east-west axis“ which here „scary many people“ stranded, Goesmann continued. Because a lot of these people „not insured“ and „not medically supplied“ Many of them start the free medical consultation, explained the expert. Currently, however, increasingly older women have the treatment mobile, which makes at the different day meetings for the homeless station visited, reported the chairman of the medical chamber district office Hanover and initiator of the project. Goesmann was equally concerned and outraged. Because the women are „no longer able to finance their medication“, but actually here should be „Say welfare state, we do not need that“, criticized the expert and therefore demanded to abolish the practice fee again and beyond remedy or drugs to give poor people in general free. (Fp)

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Image: Maren Beßler