Statutory insured individuals apparently have to wait longer for an appointment with a specialist. This is revealed in a response from the federal government.
epd | Statutory health insurance holders in Germany apparently have to wait longer for an appointment with a specialist, according to the Federal Ministry of Health. According to a survey of insured persons, the wait time for patients in specialist practices in 2024 averaged 42 days, as shown in the ministry’s response to a query by the Left party’s parliamentary group. In 2019 it was 33 days, according to the same data. The Left’s inquiry had first been reported by the Düsseldorf-based Rheinische Post.
The data covered insured persons of the statutory health insurance (GKV) who waited at least one day for specialist appointments. If one includes in the statistics those patients who visited the specialist practice on the same day as the family doctor, the average waiting time for a specialist appointment in 2024 stood at 36 days.
According to the ministry’s findings, general practitioners between 2020 and 2022 mediated between about 476,000 and 583,000 appointments with specialists each year; in 2023 it was around 2.54 million specialist appointments. The background of this pronounced increase was adjustments to the Appointment Service and Care Act (Terminservice- und Versorgungsgesetz), which aimed to shorten waiting times for patients and to push referrals via the GP or the appointment service desk (116 117) for specialists.
Expenditures for open consultation hours have risen significantly
At the same time, the annual expenditures of statutory health insurance funds for open consultation hours with doctors have grown. The extra-budgetary remuneration for services within open consultation hours rose in 2023 to around 814 million euros. In 2020 it was around 291 million euros. The background, it was stated, is that certain doctors are required to offer at least five hours per week as open consultation hours without prior appointment. For this, they receive additional money in the form of extra-budgetary remuneration.
The Left Party in the Bundestag criticized the government’s health policy. “The regulations for better care and faster appointments are a failure. They cost statutory insured people more money with poorer service,” said Julia-Christina Stange, the Left’s spokesperson for outpatient care, to the Rheinische Post. The federal government must “finally take decisive action” and examine how medical care “is actually developing.”
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