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The electronic patient file: what must happen now
Panel on electronic patient records
At a bvitg forum, representatives from politics, professional associations and industry shared their views on where improvements are still needed and when the electronic patient file will deliver its full added value.
If you want to see how the electronic patient file already works today, you have to go to Hamburg. Tim Angerer is convinced of this. He is a state councilor in the Hanseatic city's Ministry of Labour, Health, Social Affairs, Family and Integration. It is one of the model regions in Germany where the electronic patient file has already been rolled out. Tim Angerer sees the introduction primarily as a cultural task. Patients need to gain trust and feel the advantages. Currently, 84 practices are connected in Hamburg. The politician still sees a need for hospitals to catch up. He believes it is important to strengthen Gematik and to consolidate responsibility with it. It must set the direction for further steps.
Added value through interaction
Dr. Sibylle Steiner, a member of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV) board, is convinced that the successes of the electronic patient file will really come to fruition when other service providers are also integrated into the telematics infrastructure. She believes that interaction is the next important step. The practices involved in the model regions consider the electronic medication list, among other things, to be a real game changer. Another important step would be to receive digital discharge papers from the hospital in the future. The electronic patient file would have to develop from a ‘digital Leitz folder’ into a vessel for structured data. In order to gain trust and acceptance, it is important to give practices time. They should not be sanctioned for technical problems with the billing systems.
Industry as a partner
Jens Naumann, managing director of medatixx and a member of the bvitg board, believes that the systems are sufficiently mature. The task now is to roll out the electronic patient file on a broad scale and to clarify non-technical questions, such as whether practices are allowed to store individual documents from the electronic patient file locally. The regulatory framework would have to be set by legislators. With its understanding of everyday processes in medical practices, industry is an important partner in the further development of the electronic patient file. The majority of providers are ready for this. By 2027, patients will no longer carry their medical reports around in analogue form, but will know that they are stored centrally in the electronic patient file.
Dr. Florian Fuhrmann, CEO of Gematik, is also convinced of this. He views the launch very positively thanks to good communication between all parties involved. One of the largest IT projects in Europe has started on schedule and is developing in the right direction. The added value of patient-centred data supply will be increasingly tapped by connecting laboratories, for example.