Facing long wait times for specialist appointments, Nicola Buhlinger‑Göpfarth, the chair of the German Association of General Practitioners, has called for comprehensive reforms in the health system.
She told the “Rheinische Post” that, “Although Germany has a relatively high density of specialists, people still experience very long waiting periods”. The association’s leader criticised that, for decades, policymakers have been treating only the symptoms of an increasingly overburdened health system. “If we keep managing the problem instead of finally tackling the root cause, the situation will only get worse” she said.
Buhlinger‑Göpfarth stressed that the planned primary‑care system must be rolled out quickly. “By improving coordination, specialist practices can free up capacity for truly urgent cases” she explained. “The priority must be that patients who truly need a specialist appointment receive one in a timely manner”.
She pointed out that many patients are being sent to specialists who actually do not need to see them. “The slogan-whoever comes first, gets seen first-prevails in many places. It is not the patients’ fault; it is the chaotic system in which everyone must struggle to get through on their own”.
The governing coalition-Union and SPD-plans to introduce a binding referral system that requires patients to visit a general‑practice clinic first. From there, they would be referred to a specialist within a specified timeframe if necessary. Statutory health‑insured patients waited an average of 42 days for a specialist appointment in 2024.
The Greens have been sharply critical of the fact that insured patients now wait longer for specialist appointments than they did a few years ago. Green Bundestag member Janosch Dahmen, the party’s health‑policy spokesman, called the trend a “health‑policy alarm signal” in his interview with the “Rheinische Post”. He warned that “despite rising spending, statutory patients now wait longer for specialist care than a few years ago” and that expensive access programmes without real management simply do not work.
Dahmen added that Minister Warken has so far failed to present a clear concept for genuinely reducing waiting times, cutting over‑ and under‑treatment, and making better use of existing resources. He argued that anyone who seriously wants to tackle long waiting times now needs a concrete primary‑care system with defined responsibilities, digitally supported appointment control, and medical prioritisation-rather than new multi‑million‑programme projects that lack measurable benefits.
