Doctors embezzle important treatments?

More than half of the physicians in Germany have already renounced a useful treatment for cost reasons and resorted instead to an alternative.

24/11/2010

According to a survey by the research institute Allensbach, every second German doctor has ever had a patient fail to get all the necessary treatments for financial reasons. Twelve percent of the doctors even stated that they had already carried out this cost-saving measure several times.

Every second doctor has never done a useful treatment for reasons of cost
The opinion and research institute Allensbach conducted a health study among medical professionals and patients in cooperation with the financial services provider MLP. In the course of the survey, 524 physicians were interviewed throughout Germany about their treatment of patients and what economic difficulties could arise in everyday practice. According to this, more than every second doctor (55 percent) stated that he had never applied the full necessary medical treatment to a patient before. Forty-two percent of physicians said they had never resorted to beneficial therapies for reasons of cost pressures. 12 percent of the doctors said that they had not performed necessary treatments several times.

70 percent of the treatments are unnecessary?
According to the „image“ A total of 1800 patients were interviewed about their experiences and impressions in medical practices. Thirty-five percent of the respondents said that they once had the feeling that they had not received a treatment or a drug from a doctor because of the costs involved. For the insured of a private health insurance, this impression came about only in nine percent. In addition, a majority of physicians surveyed (70 percent) say that they feel that their patients are often treated unnecessarily. 28 percent said unnecessary patient appointments were an exception. More than every second patient is also afraid that he will receive only limited or inadequate health care from his doctor for cost reasons in health care.

The result is not new
Already once a similar study among clinic physicians came to almost identical results. In 2009, the University of Tübingen interviewed 1137 randomly selected hospital doctors. In this study, 77 percent of physicians stated that they had failed to take necessary health measures. Instead, the beneficial therapy has been replaced by a less expensive and less effective treatment. At that time, 13 percent even said that they would be deprived of useful health care at least once a week for reasons of cost.

Possible backgrounds
Some treatments are not or not yet recognized by the health insurances in combination with individual illnesses, so that some fees are not reimbursed according to the doctors. Another problem could be the inadequately budgeted annual budgets. In early November, for example, the Federal Association of Dentists complained about insufficient budgets for dental treatment. Patients of the statutory health insurance companies would not be assigned any more dental appointments this year because the costs incurred are no longer reimbursed to the dentists. The association of health insurance companies rejected the criticism and pointed out that emergencies still need to be treated, otherwise the doctors behaved unlawfully. The association then rowed back and stated that the medical trial was taken for granted.

In the health report, which was published recently, not only health care services but also the opinion on the planned health care reform were questioned. For example, the respondents also stated what their views on the planned additional contributions are and how they assess the changes in the joint system. For the first time, the evaluation of the German health system was put into an international comparison. Thus insured persons in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Sweden were interviewed in order to establish a comparison of neighboring countries. (Sb)

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