The President of the German Federal Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, Klaus Reinhardt, has called for a higher health insurance contribution or a practice fee for patients who still want to freely choose their doctors. In the future, patients should enroll in a general practitioner’s practice, which would then take over the coordination of further treatment, including referrals to specialist doctors, Reinhardt told the “Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland” (Friday editions). In the case of certain chronic illnesses, a specialist doctor could also take over the coordination of treatment.
To make the model work, financial incentives are needed, for example, a lower health insurance contribution for those who enroll in such a model, Reinhardt said. “Those who still want to have an uncontrolled access to the healthcare system will have to pay a bit more, because they also cause higher costs” the association president said. “It’s also possible that a ten or twenty euro fee will be due, if patients leave the agreed-upon treatment path and still consult a second specialist doctor or another general practitioner” Reinhardt suggested.
He referred to surveys showing that patients in certain regions, on average, have 1.5 general practitioners. “So, every second person had a second general practitioner, who in most cases didn’t know anything about the other. We can no longer afford this in the face of the increasing personnel shortage and rising costs” Reinhardt warned. Germany is one of the few countries worldwide that has a healthcare system in which patients, to a significant degree, control the treatments, with those who least require it doing so.