Markus Beier, the federal chair of the Deutsche Hausärzteverband (German General Practitioners Association), has issued a stark assessment of the electronic patient record (ePA) that was rolled out nationwide just over a year ago.
According to Beier, almost none of the patients have actually looked at their ePA. He attributes this low uptake to an “absurdly complicated registration process” that ultimately frustrates even digitally‑savvy users, causing them to abandon the system.
The Federal Ministry of Health estimates that only about four million of the 74 million statutory insurance holders use the ePA. Many people are apparently unaware that they even possess an electronic record.
Beier insists that further development is urgently needed. “In other countries the ePA works, but here in Germany it fails because of the concrete implementation”. He argues that the current system is essentially a disordered collection of PDFs that offers little practical value to clinics.
Doctors must now labor through a multitude of documents, and there is no full‑text search capability. Moreover, the telematics infrastructure underpinning the ePA is plagued by frequent outages and massive disruptions, which consume a great deal of clinical time and breed considerable frustration.
