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Germany Mandates Electronic Patient Records for Doctors, Hospitals and Pharmacies

Regional leaders report broad readiness for the rollout.

Overview

  • The requirement took effect on October 1, obliging providers to use the ePA and record new diagnoses and findings.
  • Brandenburg’s physician association says practices are well prepared, and pharmacy groups report they can use the system as intended with medication lists visible when a patient’s health card is inserted.
  • Roughly 70 million statutory insured people received auto-created records earlier this year under an opt-out model.
  • Access rights are granted for 90 days when the insurance card is read, and patients can log in to control which clinicians see which data.
  • Pharmacists point to repeated past outages that hindered e-prescriptions and urge Gematik to fix infrastructure issues, while key modules such as narcotics prescriptions, aids and appliances, and non-prescription medicines are slated for next year.