German doctors warn patients face longer waits for appointments from 2027
The head of Germany's association of statutory health insurance physicians expects longer waits for patients, saying government funding cuts will eliminate more than 50 million appointments.
Archive image · Photo: Fridolin freudenfett / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Patients with statutory health insurance in Germany will have to wait longer for doctor's appointments starting next year, according to the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV). Its chairman, Andreas Gassen, told Bild newspaper that federal government cuts to funding for outpatient care would eliminate more than 50 million appointments.
Gassen also criticized an emergency care reform recently passed by the Bundestag, which requires practices to report a fixed number of open appointments to official booking services; previously, practices set that number themselves. That will not get patients seen any faster, Gassen said. "The shortage of appointments will therefore get even worse."
Only more money for outpatient care would create more appointments, Gassen argued. The KBV accuses the government of first scrapping extra pay for additional appointments and then tightening the reporting requirement.