“The existing plans for e-prescriptions must therefore be buried”
17.02.2022 14:37
The Douglas perfumery chain has discovered the lucrative pharmacy business: By purchasing a Dutch mail order company, the company can enter the online medication market. “Like other competitors, everyone is waiting for the electronic prescription for health insurance prescriptions to become established in Germany, made possible by laws passed in Berlin,” comments the Vice-Chairman of the Free Medical Association, Dr. Silke Lüder, the current development.
Combined with ever new options for telemedical consultations with strangers, there is obviously great potential for returns here. Against this background, the independent medical profession still fears that the planned e-prescription will open the door for large corporations to take over the outpatient medical business. “Since almost all patients will in future be given a large-format paper printout with a QR code - in addition to the prescription being forwarded online to the central server - the health insurance prescriptions can be forwarded directly to foreign mail-order pharmacies via an app. Some of these directly refer to telemedicine companies.”
After all, this type of advertising was recently deemed illegal by the Federal Court of Justice (BGH ruling of December 9, 2021 - I ZR 146/20 - Advertising for distance treatment). “The BGH has determined that the advertised remote treatments do not correspond to the 'generally recognized standard of medical treatment in Germany' because this standard requires that the doctor see and hear the patient - for example by palpation, tapping or listening or with medical-technical devices Aids such as ultrasound – can examine. This requires the physical presence of doctor and patient and is not possible during a video consultation,” explains FÄ chairman Wieland Dietrich. According to Dietrich, the highest court ruling is “a slap in the face to all those who want to turn medicine into one large, lucrative, low-quality business field. It is doubtful whether anyone in Berlin cares about the BGH’s decision.”
For general practitioner Lüder, it is questionable how sensible it is to transform medical care into a capital-rich market and thus drastically reduce the existing quality of medicine. “Telemedicine is not medicine, but at best a remote consultation over more or less poor internet connections. Medical treatment means action, includes direct contact, physical examination and personal interaction between patient and doctor in a confidential space protected by confidentiality,” said Lüder in Hamburg in mid-February.
“As a medical association that is concerned with preserving the basics of our profession, we will continue to work to defend the quality of medicine in the future,” says the FÄ. “So far, the introduction of electronic prescriptions via the telematics infrastructure has completely failed. “Forced on us as doctors from above, just like the electronic certificate of incapacity for work, nothing has worked so far in this state model,” says Lüder. Nevertheless, hundreds of millions of euros would continue to be wasted and medical practices in the middle of the Corona crisis would be burdened with investments in technology that would sometimes make daily work processes in the practices impossible, as has currently been presented by the Bavarian KV in the Bundestag's Petitions Committee. “The existing plans for e-prescriptions must therefore be buried,” demands the Free Medical Association.