Free Medical Association
Essen/ Hamburg (ots)
Important health policy topics are on the agenda at the German Doctors’ Day 2023, which will take place in Essen from May 16, including the planned digitization including an electronic patient file (ePA) and planned changes in the area of clinics and emergency services. Another big topic: “Freedom and responsibility of the medical profession”.
“What exactly does ‘freedom and responsibility’ mean in view of a Ministry of Health that focuses primarily on the promotion of hospital groups and the interests of the medical, pharmaceutical and IT industries,” asks general practitioner Dr. Silke Lüder as Vice Chair of the Free Medical Association (FÄ).
Health Minister Dr. According to Lüder, the revolutionary innovations and changes planned by Karl Lauterbach would bring about a complete upheaval in the German healthcare system, in several areas.
Planned digital law = no more medical confidentiality!
Before the upcoming Doctors’ Day, the Independent Medical Association emphasizes its rejection of a future automatically centrally created electronic patient file (ePA) for every person from birth with automated data leakage, which can then only be prevented with the help of a complex objection solution. Lüder: “The Bundestag rejected this procedure for organ donation, but it is now to be enforced by state coercion for the much more sensitive medical data. This will undermine informational self-determination and medical confidentiality.”
Expecting patients to actively speak out against this data transfer is unreasonable for those affected, Lüder continued. Especially since older people in particular are overwhelmed and sometimes do not have the corresponding (digital) possibilities to object.
The simultaneous EU-wide planning for a European data room, in which the patient’s disease data could be requested from practices and clinics for commercial research without the right to object, is evaluated by the independent medical profession as “unrestricted commercialization” in favor of new business areas and as the destruction of the millennia-old foundations of medical profession.
Lost sight of patient interests
According to Lüder, even with the forthcoming fundamental changes in the hospital landscape, the emergency service system and the so-called outpatient treatment, commercial aspects such as cost savings are the focus of health policy, but not the needs of the patients. Especially since the expert council set up by Federal Minister Karl Lauterbach completely lacked outpatient practice representatives and the self-administration of the health care system and the results were accordingly “unworldly”. “Around 90 percent of all cases of illness are currently treated on an outpatient basis,” emphasizes the Hamburg general practitioner Silke Lüder and thus also the importance of outpatient medicine. “Thousands of vacant practice seats, frustration among doctors and medical professionals, and no financial support for practices as opposed to clinics; what was once the ‘best healthcare system in the world’ is being destroyed – a healthcare system that has worked well for decades!”
Funding instead of budgeting
“As in the inpatient sector, private practices also need an energy cost subsidy, inflation compensation and real financing of digitization costs,” adds Wieland Dietrich, Federal Chairman of the Free Medical Association and resident dermatologist in Essen. “Anyone who wants economically reasonable medicine must also pay decently for outpatient medicine – in other words, funding instead of budgeting,” Dietrich continued.
Increase GOÄ point values
The health insurance companies only spend around 15% of their income on outpatient medicine, which is too little in an aging society and outpatient treatment being propagated. “It will be the patients who will suffer from the forthcoming changes in the healthcare system,” summarizes Dietrich. For the field of private medicine, the Free Medical Association (FÄ) demands a significant increase in point values in the applicable fee schedule (GOÄ). From the point of view of the FA, it is a scandal that the fees are not being increased after more than 27 years of stagnation. This leads to a bleeding out of all practices, because the existence of most contract medical practices is also dependent on the GOÄ.
Rapid reversal required
“If there is no rapid change of course in health policy, I fear dramatic health care problems and consequences for sick people in this country,” warns the FÄ chairman. The German Doctors’ Day in mid-May was all the more urged to position itself clearly. “Freedom and responsibility are possible – but they require a paradigm shift in health policy!” emphasizes Wieland Dietrich.
About the Free Medical Association
The Free Medical Association e. V. (FÄ) is an association that represents the medical profession as a freelance profession. It was founded in 2004 and today has more than 2,000 members: mainly general practitioners and specialists as well as various medical networks. The chairman of the federal association is Wieland Dietrich, a dermatologist in Essen. The aim of the FÄ is independent medicine, in which the patient and doctor are the focus and medical confidentiality is maintained.
Press contact:
V.i. s.d. P.: Wieland Dietrich, Free Medical Association,
Chairman, Gervinusstrasse 10, 45144 Essen, Tel.: 0201 68586090,
Email: [email protected], www.freie-aerzteschaft.de
Original content from: Freie Ärzteschaft eV, transmitted by news aktuell
