Doctors in Germany are warning that people with public health insurance face longer waits for appointments with specialists next year due to reforms.
Germany is pushing through sweeping cost-cutting measures in a bid to plug funding gaps and stabilise financing in the statutory health insurance system.
But critics have repeatedly warned that the austerity package will have a huge impact on people’s everyday lives.
READ ALSO: How Germany’s major public health insurance reform will affect you
Now the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV) says it fears an increase in waiting times for appointments with doctors – particularly specialists.
Chairman of the KBV, Andreas Gassen, told Bild that as a result to cuts in funding for outpatient care, “more than 50 million appointments” had been terminated.
Gassen said the shortage of appointments for those who are publicly insured will get worse in the coming years.
READ ALSO: Which specialist doctors in Germany have the longest waiting times?
According to the KBV, the planned cuts in the outpatient sector amount to around €2.7 billion for 2027 alone. A large proportion of savings is to be achieved by capping expenditure.
Fixed number of appointments
The KBV has also criticised plans to require doctors’ practices to report a fixed number of available appointments to the statutory health insurance appointment service.
Until now, practices could decide how many available appointments to report. Under the new rules – to be implemented from 2027 – they will have to report a set number.
Gassen argued that doctors’ practices having to reserve a fixed number of appointments for the central booking service would not necessarily help patients get appointments sooner.
Instead, he warned, it could leave fewer appointments available:”If a fixed quota of appointments to be reported is set and these are thereby blocked in the practices, they will no longer be available to patients at those practices.”
Union and SPD call for faster appointments with specialists
Following the warnings, politicians from the conservative Union (CDU/CSU) and centre-left SPD are pressing for countermeasures. They said the changes could result in a wider gap regarding availability of appointments between the publicly-insured and those who have private health insurance.
Klaus Holetschek, CSU parliamentary group leader in the Bavarian state parliament, said, “There is an imbalance in terms of how quickly those with statutory and private health insurance can secure specialist appointments.”
He suggested the austerity measures threaten to further exacerbate this imbalance.
“We should consider whether online booking portals should no longer be allowed to ask whether a patient is covered by statutory or private health insurance,” said Holetschek.
Christos Pantazis, the SPD’s health policy spokesperson, also called for action: “How quickly someone gets an appointment with a specialist must not depend on their insurance status.”
“The decisive factor must be medical urgency – not whether someone is covered by statutory or private health insurance.”
READ ALSO: How to speed up getting a doctor’s appointment in Germany
With reporting by DPA
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