Filling the ePA with data will cost a lot of money.
(Photo: imago/Westend61)
Berlin It is the most important digital project of Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD). With the electronic patient record (ePA), the healthcare system is finally set to go digital. In March, Lauterbach announced the “restart” of the ePA. A draft bill from the Ministry of Health, which is available to the Handelsblatt, should now regulate the details.
According to this, people with statutory health insurance should automatically receive the ePA on January 15, 2025. Anyone who does not wish to use the ePA must expressly object via a so-called opt-out procedure. “The ePA remains a voluntary application, the use of which can be objected to or restricted by any insured person,” the draft reads. The paper is currently still being coordinated between the ministries.
Insured persons should also have the right to have old, selected patient files digitized by their health insurance company. According to the draft, you can have up to ten documents from your health insurance company entered into the ePA twice over a period of two years.
The plan is for insured persons to go to the office of their health insurance company with the paper documents or to send them to their health insurance company. Criticism of this came from the central association of statutory health insurance.
“We have doubts that successful digitization consists of first printing out the findings available in digital form from the doctors and clinics, then having the insured person carry them around in stacks or send them around in order to then digitize them again at the health insurance companies,” said Sprecher Florian Lanz the Handelsblatt.
Millions of printouts on paper?
If only ten percent of those with statutory health insurance took advantage of this option, they would carry or send 146 million paper documents from A to B, they said. “That would be a paper stack production project and not modern digitization,” said the association spokesman.
With the ePA, millions of people with statutory health insurance should be able to digitally store their X-rays, medication plans and other treatment data. You and your doctors can then retrieve them. “The first application is the digitally supported medication process,” says the draft. The electronic patient summary with emergency data and the laboratory data findings are to follow as the next applications.
The e-file was introduced as a voluntary offer in 2021, but only around one percent of the 74 million insured uses it. One reason for this is that it has hardly any functions so far and the registration is very complicated.
Now the goal is that by 2026 80 percent of the insured have the digital file. Another law should also allow research-based companies to access health data for research purposes – without being able to trace the information back to the individual patient.
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In addition, it is planned to curtail the influence of the federal data protection officer and to completely take over Gematik, the authority responsible for digitization. So far, the Federal Ministry of Health only holds the majority of the share. Shareholders are also representatives of health insurance companies and doctors, for example.
The bill also provides that the limit on video consultation hours will be lifted. So far, doctors have only been allowed to bill 30 percent of treatments as video consultations.
Health insurance companies expect high costs
The plans mean considerable costs for the economy and the statutory health insurance companies. According to the draft, annual costs of 887 million euros are incurred just for service providers such as practices and hospitals to fill the ePA with data. In addition, the draft lists 319 million euros in additional costs for social security from 2025, which will increase by a further 15 million euros by 2028.
This includes, for example, five million euros per year for the objection procedure. This includes an information letter to the insured and professional advice.
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