Physicians who work part-time in the hospital or are already retired, elective doctors or young doctors “fresh from the university” – they are supposed to help out in places where a Lower Austrian panel doctor position is vacant. That’s the theory. But are there enough doctors in practice who are willing to do this?
Yes, says the President of the Lower Austrian Medical Association, Harald Schlögel. For the time being, they are working together with the Vienna Medical Association, because in Vienna there is already a pool of around 400 doctors for such activities, according to Schlögel. “Since we started working on this project, the information from the Vienna Medical Association was that there were sufficiently motivated colleagues who would also be happy to travel to Lower Austria to help out there,” assures Schlögel. In addition, there is already the company in Vienna that arranges and assigns colleagues.
Constantly changing doctors in surgeries
The downer with the substitute doctor system: Of course you don’t have a doctor in the community, but you can meet a different doctor on every visit. The motto of the medical association in this regard: Better that way than no doctor at all. “I always compare it to an ambulance. If there is no doctor at all, the patients have to go to an outpatient clinic in a hospital, and they don’t have a doctor they trust there either,” says Schlögel. In any case, the ultimate goal is that one of the substitute doctors then decides to take over the practice permanently.
In concrete terms, there should be a platform on which the municipalities can register their needs and the doctors their availability. “Maissau says, for example, we need someone for four hours on three days and then a doctor says, ‘Yes, I can do that day, I can take over the duty’.”
Own Lower Austrian doctor pool as a goal
After starting in Mistelbach, Gänserndorf and Maissau (Hollabrunn district) – the pilot communities that were chosen, among other things, because they are not too far from Vienna – new communities are to be added all the time. A separate Lower Austrian pool of doctors is also being sought, “because we can certainly not cover all the places where there is a need from Vienna,” says Schlögel.
“We want to gain experience now. Now, as soon as we see that working, we’ve got a number of mayors saying, ‘I want something like this in my community.’ So once the thing gets up and running, I assume that we can roll it out,” says Schlögel, explaining his plans in the fight against dozens of vacant cash registers in Lower Austria.
More communities are expected to join this year
The President of the Medical Association is optimistic that the plans to start this quarter can be met. The contracts are almost done. In any case, Schlögel can imagine expanding the project to ten communities by the end of the year. “We want to create a significant number this year,” he told noe.ORF.at.