KVNO: Simple illnesses do not belong in the emergency service!
09.08.2023 13:17
Statement from the CEO of the North Rhine Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KVNO), Dr. med. Frank Bergmann, on the current discussion about a possible fee for the children's emergency service.
The President of the Professional Association of Pediatricians and Adolescents (BVKJ), Dr. med. Thomas Fischbach, has called for emergency care to focus primarily on real emergencies. Due to the extremely high utilization of both the outpatient and inpatient emergency services, doctors are unable to take care of trivial concerns for which some parents cannot make it to the practice during the week, says Fischbach. That is why the BVKJ president has proposed a fee for using the emergency service in certain cases.
“In principle, I understand the criticism of my medical colleague regarding the use of emergency medical resources. We have been observing for a long time that the outpatient children's emergency service is being used more and more frequently, not only for moderate to severe illnesses, but also for minor disorders. It is noticeable that families often simply no longer have any experience with how to deal with simple infections, for example. This puts significantly more strain on outpatient on-call services than necessary, especially on weekends and public holidays.
In order to specifically address the questions and uncertainties of parents of sick children, the KVNO set up a video consultation in the pediatric emergency service last winter. In total, more than 2,300 video consultations were carried out. Almost half of the parents who called were able to receive final help as part of the online consultation, so that the young patients did not have to go to an emergency service for further treatment.
So far, however, there is a lack of secured financing for the nationwide establishment of this offer, which we as KVNO want to make available again next winter. In any case, sensible management of patients is urgently needed due to the increasingly limited personnel resources in the emergency service. The BVKJ's demand is now to make parents more responsible in certain cases. At this point I would like to add that if politicians and health insurance companies don't want this, you have to offer alternative control options and also finance them. We were able to show that video consultations in the children's emergency service could be a sensible alternative.
Another point also plays an important role here: a high-quality initial assessment process that can meaningfully filter patient concerns. This is done e.g. B. via the service hotline for outpatient care 116 117. At the beginning of March, the North Rhine Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians took over the operation of the hotline for the Rhineland itself. Since then, availability has improved significantly in every respect and was recently almost 100 percent, even on the weekend days with the most callers (Saturday and Sunday), with a waiting time of just over a minute. We can highly recommend that concerned parents make intensive use of this service.”