The KVB board rejects Lauterbach's statements about the on-call service of general practitioners and specialists

24.02.2015 15:32

The statements of the SPD health expert Professor Dr. Karl Lauterbach in an interview in the "Rundschau" on Bavarian television on February 17, 2015. In the interview, Lauterbach claimed, among other things, that the emergency departments of the clinics were overloaded because there were too few resident doctors on call and the associations of statutory health insurance physicians not sufficiently committed to providing the services. At least for Bavaria, this does not apply at all, according to the KVB board.

As early as 2003, the KVB took over the professional coordination of on-call calls with its own switching and advice centers. Around 1.5 million successful calls per year show that this offer is well received by people in the Free State using the nationwide telephone number 116 117. In addition, all general practitioners and specialists in Bavaria are obliged to take part in the on-call service and comply with this obligation - unless there are particularly serious reasons against it.

In addition to the two placement and advice centers in Munich and Bayreuth, the KVB also operates four on-call practices. There are also 48 cooperative on-call practices across Bavaria, most of which are located in hospitals and were usually founded on the initiative of local doctors. The number of these on-call practices is expected to gradually increase to 100 over the next few years.

“With his recent statements, Mr Lauterbach has once again proven himself to be a lobbyist for the hospital groups,” explained the KVB board member, Dr. Wolfgang Krombholz, Dr. Pedro Schmelz and Dr. Ilka Enger. The actual concern of the clinics is entirely understandable, according to the KVB board: “The hospital company's criticism that treatment cases in the emergency rooms are not sufficiently remunerated is completely justified. However, this also applies to the outpatient treatment of patients in the practices. The percentage of statutory health insurance expenditure on outpatient care for the insured is steadily declining. It would actually be up to politicians to remedy this and finally ensure that more money flows into outpatient care. Instead, Mr. Lauterbach raves about structural deficits in the medical on-call service, which he certainly knows nothing about, as his interview on Bavarian television showed only too clearly.”