6 октября, 2020

Pain physician complains about supply deficits, KV boss about practice losses

In the opinion of the German Society for Pain Medicine, the care of pain patients in Germany still needs to be optimized. «The claim of the provider company German Society for Pain Medicine is to improve care concretely,» said Dr. Johannes Horlemann, Kevelaer, President of German Society for Pain Medicine at the Pain and Palliative Day.He was therefore pleased to be able to continue the discussion with representatives of the Health Committee, which began last year. In Germany, 3.9 million people live with severe chronic pain. In purely mathematical terms, the 1,400 pain physicians could treat a maximum of 420,000 of them per quarter. The rest fell through the cracks. «This must not happen,» Horlemann demanded. A nationwide supply is also not ensured in Germany – and a change in demand planning at the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV) is not an issue. If self-government does not create the necessary framework conditions, politicians must act. The age structure in pain medicine is also extremely worrying: In the next five years, half of the currently working pain physicians will retire.mThere should also be a need for optimization in the Training support . Pain medicine is excluded here, criticized DGS Vice President Dr. Silvia Maurer (Bad Bergzabern).The reason: Pain medicine is an additional designation and not a specialist training. Only the KV Westfalen-Lippe provides funds to promote further training in pain medicine. 

In purely mathematical terms, every medical practice in Germany loses an average of 76 euros per calendar day. With this number, the chairman of the board of the Kassenärztliche Vereinigung Nordrhein (KVNO), Dr. Frank Bergmann, went public this week, reports the «Ärztliche Nachrichtendienst». Bergmann had referred to calculations of the Central Institute for Statutory Health Insurance Physicians. Accordingly, outpatient care in Germany was missing 2.8 billion euros this year alone. This means that each practice makes a loss of 28,000 euros. One reason for this is the general price increase of 8.7 percent; the intelligence service quotes the KV chief.  

«What we are experiencing right now is an indictment of the entire health system.Hospitals and clinics are to be kept running with a lot of additional money. The practices of the private practice, which by far provide the majority of the health care of patients, are extremely rare in the political vocabulary these days,» Bergmann continued.

The German Diabetes  Gesellschaft and the Association of Education and Training (VBE) are calling for a «turning point» for the inclusion of children with chronic illnesses.Germany’s schools are struggling with a variety of problems. According to recent studies, the most serious of these is the shortage of teachers, which leads to an overload of teachers. The Association-_ Education and  Education (VBE) has published the results of a representative forsa survey, according to which it is estimated that there is already a shortage of around 50,000 teachers nationwide. The German Diabetes  Society and the Association of Education and Training (VBE) take this as an opportunity to renew their demand for school health professionals – these could make an important contribution to the inclusion of chronically ill or children with disabilities and thus noticeably relieve the burden on teaching staff.

The transfer of knowledge is a central, but by no means the only task that teachers fulfil in everyday school life.Disputes must be settled, concerns listened to and health issues clarified again and again. «In the past, teachers have been overwhelmed with a multitude of tasks without politics having created framework conditions to be able to fulfil them. In order to cope with all this and to be able to meet the challenges of a modern school day, multi-professional teams, for example of school social workers or school health professionals, urgently need to go to schools. In addition, they make an indispensable contribution to health prevention,» says Gerhard Brand, Chairman of the Association of Education and Training VBE. While school social workers are already working in many schools, school health professionals are unfortunately still the exception.

The need for medically trained personnel would be high, and not primarily for minor everyday incidents – scraped knees or sudden abdominal pain. These are time-consuming, but usually harmless.Much more important would be the availability of a medically trained contact person for children with chronic diseases such as type 1 diabetes or disability. «Especially for these children and their families, school attendance is a major hurdle due to the increasing number of all-day schooling,» says Professor Dr. med. Andreas Neu, President of the DDG and acting Medical Director at the Department of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine at the University Hospital Tübingen. In order to avoid serious consequences of diabetes, young patients must pay attention to their diet, regularly measure blood sugar and inject insulin if necessary. «Children of primary school age are often overwhelmed by this,» reports Neu. «This also applies to the teachers – after all, they are neither responsible nor trained for such tasks.»

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Source — https://www.univadis.de/viewarticle/schmerzmediziner-klagt-%25C3%25BCber-versorgungsdefizite-kv-chef-2023a100069x

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