89 percent of Germans are in favor of the country doctor quota

18.10.2017 11:55

47 percent of Germans see the greatest need for action in the German health system in the next three to five years as ensuring medical care in rural regions. Citizens over the age of 60 are particularly concerned about access to doctors in the village (58 percent). 58 percent of Germans believe that there urgently needs to be improvements in the allocation of specialist appointments. These are the results of a population-representative survey on the German healthcare system commissioned by the auditing and consulting company PwC.

“Access to specialists is also more critical in rural regions,” says Michael Burkhart, head of healthcare and pharmaceuticals at PwC Germany. According to the survey, 46 percent of Germans are already dissatisfied with the waiting times in the practice and the distance of their specialist. All age groups are affected roughly equally. Differences in the size of the place of residence become visible: 56 percent of residents in small towns with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants are not satisfied with specialist waiting times and distance; in a city with more than 100,000 inhabitants the figure is only 42 percent. The figures for general practitioners are currently even better: only twelve percent are dissatisfied.

Some federal states plan to allocate some of the study places only to applicants who commit to temporarily working as a family doctor in rural regions. This regulation is intended to counteract the lack of medical care in rural areas. Around nine out of ten Germans support this so-called country doctor quota. One in three (32 percent) is in favor of this funding because they live in a rural region. However, more than one in two people (57 percent) are in favor of this rural doctor quota despite their urban environment with good medical care. Only six percent are against it - the opponents live in roughly equal proportions in the city and in the country.

According to the results, for around a third of German citizens, securing small hospitals in rural areas is one of the important challenges of German health policy. “Losses in this area could dramatically worsen medical care overall – especially in the already critical area of specialists,” warns Burkhart. This represents a further risk for medical care in rural areas.

background
For the study “Desires for the Health System”, 1,003 Germans aged 18 and over were surveyed on behalf of PwC, representative of the population. The market research institute Research Now conducted the survey online in August 2017.