Digital laws are bringing decisive progress after years of stagnation
29.08.2023 11:39
On August 30th, the cabinet will discuss the two laws presented by Federal Minister Karl Lauterbach on the digitalization of the German healthcare system. The AOK community sees significant progress in both the Act to Accelerate Digitalization (DigiG) and the Health Data Usage Act (GDNG), emphasizes the CEO of the AOK Federal Association, Dr. Carola Reimann:
“After years of stagnation and muddling through, the two digital laws presented by Minister Lauterbach can bring significant progress in the digitalization of the healthcare system. With the introduction of the opt-out ePA, the law to accelerate the digitalization of the healthcare system creates the conditions for the electronic patient file to become mass-applied. It can finally develop into a relevant platform for the better exchange of health data between service providers. It is an advantage for the insured that the ePA should also enable access to the e-prescription in the future. The expansion into a central platform is also being further advanced by storing the electronic patient records and the medication plan in the ePA. It would be logical to extend this approach to emergency data. At this point the legislature should make further improvements.
The law for the improved use of health data opens up new perspectives for a better and more systematic evaluation of existing health data for the benefit of insured persons and patients. Above all, we welcome the fact that the GDNG expands the options available to health and nursing care funds for care management based on the existing insured person data. This enables the insured to receive targeted information and advice about care or prevention offers, thereby creating real added value for the insured. In the future, we will be able to bring together data from different sectors and from different service providers and evaluate them together - for example, for the simultaneous prescription of medicines that could pose a risk of dangerous interactions and therefore acute health risks for the insured. In such cases, the law should give the health insurance companies the opportunity to directly address not only the insured persons, but also their treating doctors in the practice and clinic and to inform them promptly about the identified risks.