As of: February 2, 2024, 6:18 p.m
By: Romina Kunze, Natascha Heidenreich
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The first month with the e-prescription brought problems for everyone involved.
The reason for this is the technology.
A digital advance that has not yet been achieved.
Frankfurt – The pink slip has been a thing of the past for a month now, doctors are instructed to issue prescriptions electronically.
Almost 36 million e-prescriptions have been redeemed since the beginning of the year, compared to 8.8 million in December.
And yet: implementation is lagging so far.
Above all, technology stands in the way.
Doctors' practices struggle with software problems, pharmacies often have to send patients away empty-handed because digital transmission fails.
Problems with transmission: E-prescription cannot be accessed from pharmacies
Since the beginning of 2024, medication prescriptions have only been available in digital form.
However, the switch to e-prescriptions has not changed the basic process.
The family doctor writes up the prescription, which is then available either in a smartphone app, on the health card or in a printed QR code.
The medication must then be picked up at the pharmacy.
Doctors' practices, pharmacies and patients report initial difficulties with the e-prescription.
© Imago
The idea sounds easier than the implementation is.
While digitalization is intended to speed up processes in most cases, e-prescriptions often fail because of the speed.
Patients often arrive at the pharmacy faster than the prescription has been sent from the doctor's office.
Then it simply says that the e-prescription cannot be accessed.
Pitfalls of technology: Those who urgently need their medication are often disappointed with e-prescriptions
The devil of the error can sometimes be found in the doctors' signatures.
“If, for example, doctors use the so-called batch signature to sign the prescriptions, the e-prescriptions can sometimes only be accessed several hours after the doctor's visit to the pharmacy,” explains Anke Rüdinger, deputy chairwoman of the German Pharmacists Association (DAV) in a press release.
Like the pink paper before, the electronic prescription must also be signed by a doctor.
If this is not the case or there were problems with the signature, the prescription cannot be sent to the specialist service, as the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians explains.
According to the German Medical Journal,
there are
various options for signatures:
Individual signature:
The doctor can sign each prescription individually, but then has to confirm it with a PIN.
This is time-consuming, but if several prescriptions are issued, the pharmacies will quickly provide them.
The so-called
batch signature,
on the other hand, is intended more for prescription pre-orders.
Several recipes are collected and later signed.
Accordingly, it was only sent later.
In this case, only one PIN entry is necessary.
The so-called comfort signature
is therefore recommended for normal everyday practice
.
This means that up to 250 prescriptions can be signed within 24 hours;
without PIN.
Nevertheless, it is also important here that every e-prescription is signed and released directly.
Only then can patients redeem it immediately at the pharmacy.
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Another problem: “When entering the medical professional title, there are often errors in the prescription data sets,” explains Rüdinger.
Then the prescription sometimes has to be completely reissued.
Stuttering start for e-prescription: Doctors' practices complain about inconsistent software
Ironically, in recent weeks the attempt at digitization has forced many doctor's practices and pharmacies to resort to tools that are actually outdated - the fax machine.
“Unfortunately, in Germany we have not agreed on a uniform hardware that now enables uncomplicated use of these options,” said health economist Prof. Eckhard Nagel to
focus.de
about the transmission problems.
Doctors' practices continue to view the change critically.
During the debate about the introduction in June 2023, the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians clearly spoke out against it - too complicated for doctors, too many disadvantages for patients.
The German Pharmacists Association advises that anyone who is unsure can still ask the practice for a printout of the prescription.
General practitioners are legally obliged to do this.
If practices do not take part, they could face flat-rate reductions in remuneration of one percent.
(rku)