Healthcare: Lauterbach wants to catch up with digitalization with e-prescriptions

Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach hopes that the electronic prescription will be introduced quickly in early 2024. In his view, Germany is a “developing country” in the area of ​​digitization of the health system, as the dpa reports. “Honestly, it is no longer justifiable that we are still printing out prescriptions on paper these days,” said Lauterbach at the presentation of the e-prescription in Berlin. “We are a developing country when it comes to digitizing our healthcare system. Unfortunately, that’s the way it is, so we need to catch up.”

Advertisement

This race to catch up starts with the e-prescription and continues with the electronic patient file (ePA). It has been possible to call up an e-prescription in the first pharmacies since July 1st. “I assume that 2.4 million e-prescriptions have been redeemed up to now. And so far the experiences have been very positive,” said Lauterbach.

In many pharmacies it would have been possible since July 1st to call up electronic prescriptions via a reading device, but there were problems, especially at the start. Most medical practices have so far not issued any e-prescriptions because there have always been technical problems.

E-prescriptions will be mandatory for doctors from 2024

For doctors, the e-prescription should become mandatory from January 1, 2024. One of the prerequisites is a connector, a particularly secure router for connecting to the “healthcare data superhighway”. There, e-prescriptions are stored on a central e-prescription server. When the electronic health card is inserted, pharmacies are authorized to call up the e-prescriptions of the insured person from the e-prescription specialist service. In 2025 there should also be electronic patient files for everyone who does not object.

(mack)

Go to home page
#Healthcare #Lauterbach #catch #digitalization #eprescriptions