Physicians covered by statutory health insurance in Germany anticipate that wait times for medical appointments for insured patients will increase significantly starting next year. Andreas Gassen, the chairman of the Federal Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV), informed the “Bild” newspaper that the federal government has effectively eliminated over 50 million outpatient appointments due to cuts in funds allocated for ambulatory care.
Furthermore, Gassen pointed out that mandating doctors’ offices to report a fixed quota of available appointments will not result in patients gaining quicker access; on the contrary, he argued that if a set quota of slots is formally blocked within the practices, those appointments are no longer available to patients seeking care there. This measure is expected to exacerbate the current shortage of available medical slots.
The KBV has repeatedly highlighted this issue. According to Gassen, increasing the financial resources available for outpatient care is the only way to ensure that more appointments can be created. He emphasized that these are relatively straightforward economic dependencies.
