Test 5 weeks waiting for appointment with the doctor

Cash patients wait five weeks for specialist appointment

08/06/2014

Again and again reports make the round, according to which patients in Germany have to wait too long for appointments with the specialist. A test of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung shows that cash patients have to plan particularly long waiting times; On average, they have to wait twice as long as private patients.

Over half of the doctors do not comply with the recommendation
Reports about long waiting times at specialist appointments have been making the rounds for years. A test of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (F.A.S.) has now confirmed that patients in Germany have to wait a long time for an appointment with the specialist. The newspaper asked 120 physicians nationwide for an appointment. In 30 of them, there was one after more than four weeks and 20 of the doctors rejected the testers completely. The journalists concluded that only 58 percent of physicians accepted the recommendation of Health Minister Hermann Gröhe (CDU), according to which patients should not be allowed to wait more than four weeks.

Cash patients are waiting twice as long as private patients
Statutory members have to wait a long time. According to the F.A.S. they were rejected by 57 percent of the doctors or were given an appointment only after four weeks, when they revealed themselves as cash-desk patients. As a private patient, only a quarter of doctors did that. On average, cash patients waited five weeks for an appointment, private patients with two and a half weeks only half as long. The long wait for patients to be treated by the orthopedist, pediatrician, dermatologist or ophthalmologist is increasingly becoming a problem. In turn, patients who are not urgent emergencies are rejected or put off on appointments that are not weeks but months in the future. Minister of Health Gröhe wants to prescribe doctors in the future to guarantee each patient within four weeks an appointment.

Doctors see no problem
However, the medical representatives do not want to know about it and the Kassenärztliche Bundesvereinigung even claims that 80 percent of patients within three weeks would get an appointment with the specialist. However, this is the test of F.A.S. far missed. Only about half of the callers in the sample got an appointment so quickly. The chairman of the board of the Kassenärztliche Bundesvereinigung, Andreas Gassen, insisted to the F.A.S. on it and meant: „Objective studies show that waiting time is not a nationwide problem.“ He admitted, however: „The practices in Germany are full.“

Bill after the summer break
On average, every citizen visits a doctor 17 times a year. „With this value, we are the world leader“, so streets. Even the President of the Federal Medical Association, Frank Ulrich Montgomery, rejected the wishes of the policy for a comprehensive term guarantee: „There can hardly be an unlimited promise of capped budgets.“ Federal Health Minister Gröhe, on the other hand, says: „Unfortunately, long waiting times are not an isolated case.“ He feels confirmed by the F.A.S. test and wants to present the bill with the four-week period after the summer break. The draft should also provide appointment service points, which help patients with the specialist search.

faCharts appointment within one working day
A transfer model in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, showing that the Kassenärztliche Vereinigung and the AOK Nordost have introduced there in 2011, shows that faster specialist appointments are possible for acute problems. According to this, patients with an urgent medical problem can get an appointment with the specialist within one working day. This is made possible by the model with A and B referrals, in which the attending physician performs the medical assessment in advance and involves his colleague in an unbureaucratic way. (Ad)