Bundestag to decide on boost for e-prescription

Health - Bundestag to decide on boost for e-prescription

After years of delays, electronic prescriptions and digital patient records are to be introduced into widespread everyday use. This is the aim of the legislative plans of the traffic light coalition, which the Bundestag is set to pass today.

According to these plans, e-prescriptions are to become standard and mandatory for practices at the beginning of 2024. At the beginning of 2025, all people with statutory health insurance are to receive electronic patient files - unless they refuse to do so. According to the plans of Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD), the use of combined health data for research is to make progress.

Green health expert Janosch Dahmen spoke of a "long overdue update" for the digitalization of the healthcare system. "In future, we will turn the previously useless electronic patient file for a few into a personal health data room for everyone," he told the German Press Agency. This would not only allow all treating professions to see relevant information in one place, but also patients themselves for the first time. "This will finally do away with fax machines and file folders and strengthen patient autonomy as well as patient rights."

The head of Techniker Krankenkasse, Jens Baas, said that the e-file should be a natural part of every visit to the doctor. It is important that it becomes more user-friendly. For example, logging in must be simplified. "As patients are used to from other apps, it must also be possible to identify themselves in the file using a face scan or fingerprint," said Baas. For doctors, the record must be quick and easy to fill in and must not become a time waster in surgeries.

In concrete terms, two laws are about speeding up applications with practical benefits for patients.

E-patient records for everyone

There should finally be a breakthrough for digital patient files - as a personal data memory that accompanies you throughout your life with all doctors. The bundled data should also avoid drug interactions and multiple examinations. E-files were already introduced as an optional service in 2021, but so far only around one percent of the 74 million people with statutory health insurance have one. The declared goal is 80 percent by 2025, and the government is switching to the "opt-out" principle: According to the draft law, the health insurance funds are to provide broad information and automatically set up an e-file for everyone by January 15, 2025 - unless you object.

The e-file is to be accessible with certain identification rules via health insurance apps. Doctors will be able to decide for themselves what to set and who can access what. Initially, an overview of medication will be available, followed by laboratory results, among other things. It should be possible to take the data with you when you change health insurer.

E-prescription on a broad front

E-prescriptions have long been available via a special app or a printed QR code instead of the usual pink slips of paper. However, a large-scale launch was delayed several times due to technical problems. In the meantime, there is a simpler way to redeem the card, which involves inserting the insurance card into a reader at the pharmacy. By law, it will now be mandatory for doctors to issue prescriptions electronically from January 1, 2024.

The obligation was actually already in place from the beginning of 2022, but practices should now make the change, as the prerequisites for this were not always in place. This includes a connecting device for the protected data highway of the healthcare system. E-prescriptions are stored on a central server and the pharmacy is authorized to retrieve them from there when the health insurance card is inserted. In future, the e-prescription app will also be integrated into health insurance apps.

Easier data research

Research using health data is also set to make progress. To this end, a law should make it possible to link data from different sources at a central access point - for example from cancer registers and health insurance companies. Data is to be encrypted (pseudonymized). Another opt-out model is planned for data stored in e-patient records: In other words, they are initially to be given a setting for "data donation" for research purposes, which can be declined.