Specialist appointments for everyone

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Have you received a long list of addresses of possible specialists from your family doctor? And now you can hang on to the phone and try to get an appointment somewhere in a timely manner? But the office hours assistant told you straight away that it was almost impossible. Such a scenario should now be a thing of the past. Because from January 25, the so-called appointment service points of the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KVen) will start their service. The promise: If you urgently need a specialist appointment, you will get it within four weeks.

Urgency from A to B.

And this is how the referral should work in concrete terms: In the future, the family doctor or specialist can note an urgency level on the referral to the specialist. For the time being, a letter is given for this. "A" means that the patient needs specialist help as soon as possible, while "B" means "can be moved". Later, these letters will be replaced by a code that will be integrated into the software systems of the doctor's office.

With an "A" on the referral slip, patients can then contact the service point of the regional association of statutory health insurance physicians. Ophthalmologists and gynecologists are excluded from this rule - here you are supported in finding an appointment even without a referral form. The staff at the service point will then arrange a suitable appointment within four weeks. If this does not succeed, they arrange outpatient treatment in a suitable hospital.

No free choice of dates

In order to guarantee a quick referral, the specialists report available appointments to the service centers. Nevertheless, there is a catch: You are not allowed to choose the date or the practice. The only requirement is that this must be reachable within 30 minutes from the nearest specialist practice by public transport. For some specialists, such as radiologists or cardiologists, it can even be 45 minutes.

Dr. Peter Potthoff, the chairman of the North Rhine National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, therefore fears that many patients will miss their appointments. “Such a blind date also carries the risk that the patient and doctor will not get along,” says Potthoff. And the specialists only implemented the legislature's demands with grudging teeth. They believed that this measure was not necessary at all. A survey of the insured by the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians confirmed this. According to this, only every tenth patient finds the waiting time for a specialist appointment too long.

No referral to a psychotherapist

And where it is particularly difficult to get an appointment, the law does not apply: The appointment service center does not step in to coordinate therapy sessions with the psychotherapist. However, this could possibly come (from) together with a reform of the Psychotherapists Act.

Source: Press information from the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians in Bavaria and North Rhine

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