Too many doctors at the Medical Service of the Health Insurance Funds
According to Hamburg's health senator Melanie Schlotzhauer (SPD), the medical service of the health insurance funds should transfer staff to the clinics. "If we want more staff, we must consistently use all available resources," said the senator in an interview in the Hamburg section of the current issue of the weekly newspaper "Die Zeit" (Thursday).
In Germany, many thousands of nurses and doctors work in the medical service and therefore in quality assurance. They are taken away from their work with patients. "Medical standards must be reviewed, but the effort involved is currently too great," said Schlotzhauer. "We sometimes trip ourselves up with our German thoroughness."
The Medical Service is the social-medical and care-related advisory and assessment service of the statutory health and long-term care insurance. According to the report, more than 11,000 people worked for the Medical Service in 2021, including almost 2,500 doctors. Last year, the experts from the statutory health insurance funds identified around 2,700 cases of medical malpractice that led to damage to patients' health.
To address the issue of excessive doctors in the Medical Service, as suggested by Senator Melanie Schlotzhauer, these medical professionals could be redeployed to hospitals. This shift could help alleviate the workload and improve patient care. Furthermore, enhancing health insurance policies could potentially include provisions for covering additional hospital visits or treatments, ensuring better health coverage for patients.
Source: www.dpa.com
