Overview

• Only about 1.5 million people, roughly 3 percent of the insured, have registered to use their insurer’s ePA app.
• Krankenkassen have pre-created tens of millions of records via opt-out, including around 50 million at major funds and about 70 million since January overall.
• From October 1, physicians in practices and clinics are required to fill patients’ electronic records.
• The Kassenärztliche Bundesvereinigung reports that roughly one fifth of practices still cannot work with the system because necessary software modules are missing.
• A multi-step, often cumbersome registration process is cited as a barrier, even as the ePA is designed to bundle findings, lab values and medication data to improve care and reduce duplicate tests.