Cash patients Specialist appointments are accelerated

Cash patients will soon receive specialist appointments more quickly
As of January, cash-desk patients should no longer have to wait so long for specialist appointments. Via so-called service centers they should get an appointment within four weeks. However, they can not choose the doctor.
Faster appointment of specialist appointments
In the summer, the federal government passed a law against long waiting times for an appointment with the specialist. From 23 January of the coming year, the time has come: From then cash patients should get within four weeks an appointment with the specialist. The faster allocation should be done with the help of special appointment service points. The physicians in Germany are obliged to introduce a service center in every federal state. This should help if family doctor or cash-patient have tried in vain for a specialist appointment. The appointment is only valid for a specialist in general, but not for a particular practice.

Specialist appointments will be given soon. Image: © Syda Productions - fotolia

Arrival time to the next specialist
As long waiting times are rarely a problem, according to health care physicians, most of them are unlikely to enjoy the new regime. The appointment service centers, which have to set up the 16 Kassenärztliche associations, should ensure that cash patients with an "urgent referral" can see a specialist within four weeks. Within a week, the service centers are expected to propose three appointments to the patient. This would have doctors and health insurance now agreed, as the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" (FAZ) reports. In addition, it was clarified, which arrival time the patient should be expected to the next specialist. They agreed on "preferably within 30 minutes".

Doctors are not enthusiastic
However, the service centers can only give appointments that the specialists also report. And this message should remain voluntary. "Do not want to force the doctors' associations their doctors," says the FAZ. The physicians said the scheme was not popular, even linking them with a compulsion was something that "we do not appreciate at all," said Andreas Gassen, CEO of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians in the "Deutsches Ärzteblatt". Sanctions are not provided. It would be more conceivable to create an incentive system. In order for the appointment service point to function at all, the system needs an electronic switching platform. Their structure is said to be "almost complete". In the future, the appointment platform for self-service should be expanded by the patient. (Ad)