Germany is known to lag behind when it comes to digitisation in the healthcare system with strict (and some would argue outdated) privacy legislation often hampering digital communication between departments.

Now there has been a real breakthrough for useful better care, with a law passed in the Bundestag on Thursday allowing for electronic prescriptions and digital files for important health data are set to become standard for millions of patients.

E-prescriptions will be mandatory in practices from the beginning of 2024, and from the beginning of 2025 everyone with statutory health insurance should receive e-patient files – unless they opt out.

Until now, important data has been distributed on servers in practices and hospitals where patients were treated in the past, which can cause problems and delays when they change practices or go to another provider.

German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach spoke of a “quantum leap” in digitisation in the healthcare system, adding that until now the treatment had been “suboptimal”.

Electronic Patient Records

Electronic patient records (ePA) will be a personal data storage that accompanies you throughout your life.

Medical data will be packaged together, which is intended to avoid drug interactions and multiple examinations. E-files were introduced as an optional offer in 2021, but so far only around one percent of the 74 million people with statutory health insurance have signed up for it.

The government’s new goal is to get 80 percent of people to have ePAs by 2025, and switching to the “opt-out” principle: according to the new law, the health insurance companies should provide information and automatically set up an e-file for everyone by January 15th, 2025 – unless you actively opt out.

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Healthcare apps

The e-file with certain identification rules should be accessible via apps of health insurers like Techniker Krankenkasse (TK) or AOK.

You should be able to decide for yourself what doctors can set and who can access what, as well as being given an overview of your medications, and lab results among other information. If you change health insurance, you should be able to take your data with you. The ministry explained that people without a smartphone could view their ePA in selected pharmacies.

Ombudsman offices of the health insurance companies are intended to support insured people who cannot manage the ePA via the app.

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The Green MP Janosch Dahmen, a medical doctor who focuses on health issues, said that in the future not only practicing professionals would be able to see relevant information in one place, but patients themselves would be able to see their own medical records for the first time.

Doctors and health insurance companies however warned of pitfalls.

Sick notes for childcare by the phone

Following on from the introduction of phone-in sick notes for adults on December 7th, there’s been a new step forward in getting doctors’ notes for time off work remotely. 

Parents will be able to obtain medical certificates stating that they need to care for a sick child by telephone without visiting the practice from December 18^th as part of legislation on the same day.

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According to the umbrella organisation for health insurers (GKV), certificates for the receipt of child sickness benefits should be able to be issued for a maximum of five days if the child is known to the doctor and they consider issuing it over the telephone to be justifiable.

“This will significantly reduce the burden on parents and doctors’ practices,” a GKV spokesperson said.