Health: Health insurance companies: Little objection to e-patient records

The upcoming nationwide introduction of electronic patient files has so far met with little resistance from the 75 million people with statutory health insurance. As a query by the German Press Agency to the largest German insurers AOK, Techniker, Barmer and DAK, with a total of more than 50 million insured people, revealed that only a small proportion have so far objected to the planned automatic creation of an e-patient file.

An information campaign by the health insurance companies has been running since the summer. All insured persons will be informed in writing of the introduction of the e-patient record (ePA) for everyone in January and of the opportunity to object to its installation.

Contradiction in the “low single-digit percentage range”

By the end of September, the proportion of the approximately 27 million AOK insured people who lodged an objection was very low at one percent, said a spokesman for the AOK Federal Association. A spokeswoman for the Techniker Krankenkasse (11.7 million insured people) said that the objection rate at TK has so far been in the low single-digit percentage range.

According to its own information, Barmer (8.6 million insured people) has now written to almost 90 percent of its insured people. “We have only received a few contradictions,” said a spokesman. The objection rate is well below the 20 percent expected by the federal government. A concrete number can only be given at the end of the information campaign in January.

DAK-Gesundheit reports an objection rate of around one percent after letters from almost all of its 5.5 million insured persons. “This low rate confirms that our insured people feel well informed and recognize the advantages of the ePA for everyone,” said Franz-Helmut Gerhards, who is responsible for the digitalization strategy at DAK.

National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Funds: Digitalization is more than overdue

Looking at the feedback from the first few weeks of the information campaign, the CEO of the umbrella association of statutory health insurance companies (GKV), Doris Pfeiffer, spoke of a very good interim result, “because it shows that people have trust in our healthcare system.” The electronic patient record is “a great opportunity to sustainably improve people’s care,” she said.

Test operation from January 15th

E-files were already introduced in 2021 as an optional offer that insured persons have to take care of themselves. However, they have hardly been used so far. Now the principle is being reversed according to a law from the traffic light coalition: From January 15th, the health insurance companies are obliged to provide an e-file for all legally insured people, except for those who have previously objected to this. From mid-January there will initially be practical tests in two model regions (Franconia and Hamburg), and from the beginning of March, according to the Ministry of Health, Germany-wide use of the e-patient file is planned. The objection solution is criticized by data protection experts.

Findings, medication and laboratory values ​​can always be accessed via the app

The file is intended to be a digital memory for information on medications, findings and laboratory values ​​and to accompany patients throughout their lives. The insured can insert documents there themselves; doctors have to enter data from current treatments. The e-file, which is slowly filling up, is intended to help in the future when a doctor changes or moves, or in emergencies, when doctors can obtain information more quickly about a patient’s medical history or medication plan.

The insured have access to the e-file via an app from their health insurance company and can control which documents can be viewed. According to the Ministry of Health and health insurance companies, you can block documents and delete them again or have the entire file deleted again later.