Capital Congress: Gröhe wants to “give steam” to industry and self-government when it comes to eHealth
10.06.2015 14:49
Federal Minister Hermann Gröhe (CDU) has urgently appealed to all those involved in the healthcare system to “steam up” when implementing eHealth projects. The long history of the health card is “no glory”, although the potential patient benefits are undisputedly high. In the German healthcare system, there are more deaths due to the misuse of medicines than from road accidents. The medication plans and emergency data to be saved on the health card in the future would be urgently needed here.
Gröhe reiterated that these two applications provided for in the recently passed eHealth law are just the beginning: “We will not be satisfied with two applications, that would be wrong. We will monitor very closely whether others are added,” said the minister this morning during his opening speech at the Capital Congress on Medicine and Health in Berlin. At the congress until Friday, around 8,000 decision-makers from the healthcare sector will discuss a wide range of health policy and medical issues, with an important thematic focus being digitalization.
The Minister of Health criticized the networking in the German healthcare system as “Health 1.0” because, on the one hand, a lot of data was already available digitally but was then exchanged between service providers “by fax and post”. There is a “significant networking problem”. He therefore expects that the test operation of a new data network between around 1,000 doctor's practices, health insurance companies, pharmacies and hospitals, which has already been postponed for a year, will now begin in November as promised.
Immediately before his speech in front of 1,600 listeners in Berlin's CityCube, Gröhe had the federal cabinet pass the new hospital structure law, which he defended in his speech against the fierce criticism, especially from hospital companies. The federal government accepts its responsibility with the law. However, the financial misery of a large number of hospitals is primarily a matter for the states: “We cannot regulate budget debates from 16 federal states with a federal law,” Gröhe made clear.
Before the minister's speech, mathematics professor Gunter Dueck gave the many politicians present at the capital congress some entertaining advice on how to enter the political debates: Politicians think they have to pull the ears of the doctors, said Dueck. Maybe it's time to create space for creativity again and try out new things.