When it comes to digitization in the healthcare sector, the industrial nation of Germany has been lagging behind for a long time. Now plans are becoming more concrete for more speed in two projects that millions of people can use.
Booking hotels, transferring money, shopping: many things in everyday life have long been done electronically. Medical reports and prescriptions for patients are mostly still on paper.
Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) wants to build up more momentum so that the still sluggish digitization can finally pick up speed: By the beginning of 2024, e-prescriptions should be available across the board in medical practices. And by early 2025, e-health records are set to come for everyone, unless you opt out. The declared goal is a noticeable benefit for better care – and that practices and technology participate.
The head of Techniker Krankenkasse, Jens Baas, said that it was extremely important that digitization was dynamic. “Although there are e-prescriptions and electronic patient files, hardly anyone uses them.” There is therefore an urgent need for more user-friendliness and real added value for patients and doctors so that they are used on a broad basis. The FDP specialist politician Christine Aschenberg-Dugnus said that the e-file was the “heart” of the coalition’s reform plans. It enables faster and better care and efficient use of the “resource doctor”, which will become increasingly scarce in the future.
Lauterbach wants to accelerate several digital applications for patients. The Ministry has now presented a draft law for more detailed regulations:
E-prescription across the board
From January 1, 2024, it will be mandatory for doctors to issue prescriptions electronically, according to the draft. The practices should gradually change over to this. Because a start on a larger scale had been delayed several times, also due to technical problems. Practices were actually obliged to do this from the beginning of 2022. A new, simpler method of redeeming e-prescriptions should now bring about a breakthrough. Since July 1, it has been possible in the first pharmacies to insert the health insurance card into a reader. By the end of July, 80 percent of pharmacies should be able to offer this additional option.
Before that, e-prescriptions could be redeemed using a smartphone app or a printed QR code instead of the usual pink slip of paper. However, the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians had warned against false expectations that e-prescriptions could be issued in all medical practices from July 1st. One of the prerequisites is a special connection device to the protected data highway of the healthcare system. There, e-prescriptions are stored on a central server. And when the card is inserted, the pharmacy is authorized to retrieve e-prescriptions from the insured person.
E-medical record for everyone
A new start is to come for the e-files that were launched as a voluntary offer in 2021. They are a personal data store for diagnostics, X-rays and lists of medications taken, for example – and should in principle accompany patients throughout their lives with all doctors. The bundled information should, among other things, avoid interactions and unnecessary multiple examinations. The only problem is that not even one percent of the 74 million people with statutory health insurance have an e-file. The government’s declared goal is now to reach 80 percent by 2025.
To do this, the coalition wants to switch to the “opt-out” principle, and the draft law provides for more detailed regulations: health insurance companies should provide broad information and automatically set up an e-file for all those with statutory health insurance by January 15, 2025 – unless you actively disagrees. The file should then be retrievable with certain identification rules via a cash register app. You should be able to determine what doctors put in the file and who can access what. It should also be possible to integrate e-prescriptions.
How quickly the digital pace picks up should also depend on people’s trust in handling sensitive data – and on implementation. The e-file will only find its way into everyday practice if it does not remain empty, warned cashier Baas. Therefore, all actors in the healthcare system should be obliged to import data. However, many physicians are still frustrated because applications do not work stably, Medical President Klaus Reinhardt had made it clear. And practices and clinics are “not test laboratories for immature technology”. In order to keep a closer eye on progress, the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians is to report quarterly from 2024 on the proportion of e-prescriptions.
Source: Stern
