Coffins call for reforms for family doctors

Health insurance: More family doctors and better pay

28/02/2014

In Germany there are fewer and fewer family doctors. Especially in rural areas, future deficits in patient care could occur. This is indicated by the GKV-Spitzenverband. The health insurance funds are therefore calling for a restructuring of medical studies by focusing more on general medicine. According to the Lead Association, on the one hand there are too few primary care physicians, but on the other hand there is a surplus among medical specialists in Germany.

GKV-Spitzenverband: Too few GPs are being trained in Germany
According to the Lead Association, the nature of medical studies, poor pay and doctors' planning compared to medical specialists mean that the number of primary care physicians continues to decline. The National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV) also expects a general practitioner shortage in the future. By 2020, about 51,000 doctors in Germany would be eliminated, emphasizes the outgoing KBV boss Andreas Köhler. Among them also many family doctors. About 40 percent of doctors in private practice are still active as primary care physicians, according to the umbrella association. In 2012, however, only 11 percent of all specialist recognitions in the field of general medicine took place. The general practitioner shortage of tomorrow is already outlined.

„In Germany far too few family doctors are being trained. Here, the Länder did not do a good job with university education and self-administration in the organization of continuing education, as well as in the planning of requirements planning and licensing law“, criticizes the vice-chairman of the umbrella association, Johann-Magnus von Stackelberg. „We demand that the education at the universities in the future of the primary care basic care and a central role and that the medical self-government is not only on more and more specialization.“

According to a KVB spokesman, the federation currently expects 2,600 unfilled primary care and 2,000 free specialist residences. However, these figures are to be seen purely mathematically, since in the Federal Republic all designated in the official physician planning planning districts should be filled to 110 percent, the coffers report. There were only about 100 family doctors to close today's, actual supply gap.

To meet this in the future with sufficient family physicians, must be created in medical study urgently more space for general medicine. In the planning of physicians, moreover, the generalists would have to be more strongly promoted and the fees paid to GPs would have to be improved in comparison to the specialist physicians.

Cash registers are calling for new prescriptions for medical fees
The head organization sees in the defaults for the fee increases of the physicians a big problem, since the increasing health load of the population on the payment affects. The greater the need for treatment, the higher the fee. In addition, more or more serious diagnoses also lead to an overall increase in the fee paid by the health insurances to the medical profession. According to the top association, however, the diagnostic site differs in part from reality. According to the medical diagnoses, the number of diabetics has to increase by eight percent annually. According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), however, only an increase of two percent was recorded. „It is completely unacceptable for diagnoses to be overstated in order to get more medical fees. It has been shown that the diagnoses written down by the doctors themselves are not a suitable basis for increasing medical compensation. Here the legislator must create new conditions“, calls for Stackelberg.

Frank Ulrich Montgomery, President of the German Medical Association, rejected the allegations and accused the Kassenverband of distracting from their own inaction. (Ag)