Cash patients wait longer for a doctor's appointment

Study: Cash patients have to wait longer for a doctor's appointment

09/04/2013

Cash patients have to wait much longer for an appointment with the doctor as private insurance - a topic that makes headlines again and now by a new study on behalf of the consumer policy spokeswoman of the Greens in the Bundestag, Nicole Maisch, was confirmed again.

Study with 470 specialist practices
According to a recent press release on hr-online.de throughout Hesse, around 470 specialist medical practices from eight different medical fields were tested in this representative study, including experts in skin, eyes, the ear, nose and throat, neurology and cardiology , Radiology, Gastroenterology and Orthopedics. Each practice was called twice in February and March of this year for an appointment, whereby the callers turned out to be cash-on-demand and sometimes private-insured.

Statutory members wait 20 days longer than private insured
According to hr-iNFO, the test of the Greens revealed a clear result: legally insured persons have to wait an average of 20 days longer for an appointment with the specialist than private insured persons - a situation which shows the Greens urgent need for action: „The artificial two-class medicine penalizes the Kassenpatienten and must be abolished“, said the consumer policy spokeswoman of the Greens in the Bundestag, Nicole Maisch.

The investigation had shown that Hessian health insurance patients have to wait an average of 36 days for an appointment with a specialist, whereas privately insured patients only had to wait 16 days. However, there were clear regional differences: whereas in Wiesbaden the difference was only 11 days, patients in Hanau have to be prepared to wait around 36 days longer. But not in all practices, the testers were confronted with such strong differences - in every fourth practice, there were little or no differences.

Darmstadt ophthalmologist sets negative record
The absolute negative record was set up by an ophthalmologist from Darmstadt: Here a cash-case patient would have had to wait one year for an appointment, whereas a private insured person would have gotten a commitment after 44 days. But the Darmstadt ophthalmologist is not an isolated case, because according to Maisch, there are some major differences between the disciplines: „For the ophthalmologist it takes a long time, but for cardiologists or internists the differences between legally and privately insured persons are not that great“, so the politician in an interview with hr-online.

Economic disincentives Reason for different treatment of patients
Responsible for the unequal treatment of cash and private patients are, according to Maisch "economic disincentives in the system". Therefore, the politician demands a common citizens insurance for all patients instead of the current separation of legal and private. For the Kassenärztliche Vereinigung Hessen (KV), however, according to hr-iNFO there is no inequality in the treatment of patients - so it would be here and there service differences, but "differences in terms of the quality of outpatient medicine and care, according to KV spokesman Matthias Roth , there is not any“. The reason for the differences in the service Roth sees it in the cost pressure, which would be exposed to the practices, because the outpatient medicine has been underfunded for years. The fact that physicians would have to compensate for the treatment of cash patients with private patients, would be reserved from the outset, a portion of office hours for privately insured. (No)

Also read:
Cash patients wait 16 days longer
Cash patients wait longer for medical appointments
Doctor appointments: Cash patients are disadvantaged
Separation of private health insurance and GKV a discontinued model?

Picture: Gerd Altmann, Pixelio