Family doctors and AOK Soon agreement in sight

06/04/2014

The long-standing dispute over a better endowed special contract of 7,800 Bavarian family physicians with the AOK seems to be over. On 1 July, a new family doctor contract to provide general practitioners with better compensation.

Contract brings family doctors extra revenue
After years of dispute, a new family doctor contract between the AOK and the Bavarian general practitioners, which is to have a permanent existence, is due to enter into force on 1 July. This is the Bavarian family doctor association, as the association's chairman, Dieter Geis, announced on Saturday in Nuremberg. „We negotiate in a good and friendly mood and progress gradually“, Geis said on the edge of the 22nd Bayerisches Hausärztetages. The contract, which the AOK had repeatedly dismissed, most recently in 2012, brings the 7,800 family physicians in comparison to the so-called collective income with the health insurances clear additional revenue.

Patients must first go to a family doctor
The contract should also serve to strengthen the so-called pilot function of family doctor in the health system. This means that each insured person must first go to his family doctor and then decides whether the patient must be referred to a specialist. With this so-called centered care, family doctors want to prevent those insured from undermining the family doctor's system. The GPs promise the patient a holistic treatment that would avoid costly multiple examinations. Greis regretted that this pilot function was slowed down due to the dispute.

Politics improves conditions for GPs
From July, the head of the association expects a sharp increase in the number of patients enrolled in the family doctor program. „We assume that this year we will exceed the million mark in AOK patients“, so Geis. According to his information, around 600,000 AOK members are currently enrolled. In the estimation of the head of the association, setting the new federal government's course should make the family doctor contracts more attractive again for general practitioners. The black-red coalition had deleted the so-called refinancing clause, which prescribed a better remuneration of the family doctors by savings, such as with drug prescriptions.

General practice is to become more attractive for young physicians
The AOK had terminated the contract with the Bavarian family physicians in 2010 in the dispute over a higher allocation. At that time, the doctors had threatened to get out of the cash register system. However, the majority of GPs refused support in a spectacular vote in the Nuremberg Arena. In July 2012, the contract had been renewed, but the AOK announced soon after. Currently, under pressure from the state government, arbitration is in progress. Meanwhile, the association wants to strengthen its efforts to make the family doctor career for young doctors again interesting. Among other things, the general practitioners in a catalog of demands advocate making chairs for general medicine at medical faculties a standard offer. In addition, aptitude test should regulate who is admitted to medical school instead of the Abitur grade. Furthermore, a mandatory general practitioner's ward should be introduced in the Practical Year to be completed by junior doctors.

Every second person regrets their own practice
It is also suggested that young doctors should be deprived of the fear of training as a family doctor. According to a survey of the medical network „Hippokranet“ In retrospect, almost every second resident physician regrets the decision for his own practice. Reasons for this include an excessive bureaucracy and dissatisfaction with the fee. However, the vast majority of respondents would recommend young people to the medical profession, with only 29 percent not. The survey involved 747 resident physicians and 389 general practitioners. (Ad)