Overview
- Andreas Philippi, who chairs the Health Ministers’ Conference this year, is urging implementation of a nationwide pledge that GPs and pediatricians steer referrals so patients see a specialist within four weeks.
- If a practice cannot offer an appointment in that timeframe, patients would be given a hospital slot, with gynecology and ophthalmology excluded from the guarantee.
- Fresh survey data for the statutory insurers indicate one in four insured waited more than a month for a specialist visit and one in ten waited over three months.
- The GKV-Spitzenverband is calling for a legally mandated, real-time online portal that requires practices to reserve a set share of slots and treats statutory and private patients equally.
- Philippi also proposes annual prescriptions for stable chronic patients and wider use of digital anamnesis, AI triage and telemedicine, with the package still needing agreement from doctors’ groups and regulatory and IT work before rollout.