“Juggling numbers won’t solve the shortage of doctors!”

02.02.2010 15:01

BNC criticizes cashier representatives

In the past few weeks, representatives of health insurance companies have repeatedly denied that there is a shortage of doctors in Germany that threatens comprehensive, home-based care. Most recently, Joachim Klose from the AOK Scientific Institute (WIdO), a healthcare expert, also claimed that there is no shortage of doctors, but rather a distribution problem.

Among other things, he referred to figures from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), according to which the number of doctors in Germany has increased significantly since the 1990s. The President of the Professional Association of Resident Surgeons (BNC) Dr. Dieter Haack sharply criticized Klose's statements: “The representatives of the statutory health insurance companies obviously want to downplay the supply problems. But they are not eliminating the shortage of doctors by juggling numbers!” Haack described a comparison of the development of the number of doctors in 1990 as nonsensical, since in the meantime – as required by politicians – numerous specialists have established themselves, each only representing a small medical sector cover.

For example, surgeons and anesthesiologists who operate on an outpatient basis increasingly set up practice at the end of the 1990s because the then Federal Minister of Health Horst Seehofer pushed this development. The establishment of these specialists with a full seat in the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KV) founded the success of outpatient surgery in Germany. 

Haack further explained: “Although these doctors occupy a KV seat, they do not cover the entire spectrum of surgical medicine.” A similar situation also exists among internal medicine doctors: many specialized internists such as hemato-oncologists, Gastroenterologists, cardiologists, etc. set up their own practice, which did not exist in this form at the beginning of the 1990s. “Here, once again, data from the Federal Statistical Office is being taken over uncritically and without reflection. It is nonsense to refer exclusively to the total number of doctors. A differentiation according to specialist areas would be much more sensible and closer to reality from the perspective mentioned,” said Haack.