Tiroler Tageszeitung, editorial from April 17, 2023. By Anita Heubacher: "Patient satisfaction

2023-04-16 20:00:37

Innsbruck (OTS) – In Austria you can’t choose your health insurance, you can only pay more and more with your doctor of choice. The power games between the Medical Association and the Austrian Health Insurance Fund for the medical centers are all the more annoying.

What sounds so cumbersome would bring a huge advantage for patients: You could use the e-card to go to a medical center, known as a primary care unit, and you wouldn’t have to worry about the doctor’s fee bill. The doctor settles accounts with social security. Health Minister Johannes Rauch from the Greens wants to massively increase the number of primary care units. In 2021 there should have been 75 in all of Austria, it has become 39. Tyrol has not managed a single primary care unit.
For years, the Medical Association and the Austrian Health Insurance Fund have been negotiating the framework agreement for a PVE. For years, the Chamber and the Treasury have passed the buck and played their power games. At the patient’s expense. On Wednesday, the Tyrolean Medical Association and the Austrian Health Insurance Fund, ÖGK, will meet again at the negotiating table in Innsbruck. It should be the last round of negotiations. Even if the contractual regulations have finally been worked out, it is far from certain that doctors will allow themselves to be forced into this corset. The market regulates a lot, also because politics is too slow.
And so in recent years the number of doctors of choice has increased significantly, while that of panel doctors has remained the same as the population has grown. Those who can have afforded additional insurance or a doctor of their choice for a long time. The patient pays his fee and what you get back as such from the Austrian health insurance company is in many cases a mockery.
Unlike in Germany, you cannot choose your health insurance in Austria. You pay into a health insurance company because of your profession, you find yourself with many weak contributors, as in the case of the Austrian health insurance company, and you wonder why your e-card is becoming less and less valuable. The health insurance company lacks the contributions, the good contributors keep to themselves and the waiting times are getting longer and longer because the number of panel doctors is getting smaller and smaller.
The insured were not yet on the street because many of them could still afford private doctors. However, inflation does not stop at the doctor of choice. The number of those who no longer have real freedom of choice because they don’t have the money to do so is likely to increase. This is growing resentment because the already tense situation among panel doctors will continue to worsen. It is high time to act.