“Many days when we cannot provide patients with medication!” complains pharmacist Markus Fischer from Hürth. He sees massive problems with the e-prescription that affect all of Germany.
If you can’t work properly in a pharmacy, that’s a problem. If many people are unable to get their medication as a result, it will be harmful to their health. And if the whole of Germany is also affected, something is going very wrong here! Markus Fischer from Hürth experiences the extent of this every day. He has a clear demand for Karl Lauterbach.
“Mr. Lauterbach, turn off the e-prescription until this ‘sick child’ gets well! Many days where we cannot serve patients with medication! Today nationwide! In addition to the extreme delivery bottlenecks, this can no longer be overcome!”, the pharmacist raged against the Minister of Health on February 14, 2024 on Facebook. In an interview with EXPRESS.de he explains the details and becomes clear.
Reality often looks different than planned in theory
The e-prescription is actually supposed to be a great help. “For patients, the change means more convenience and fewer trips to the doctor’s office. “Especially because of the easy redemption at the pharmacy using three options: redemption via eGK, app or with a paper printout,” it says on the official website of the Federal Ministry of Health.
The e-prescription for prescription medications has been mandatory since January 1, 2024. Manual signatures and journeys are no longer necessary; follow-up prescriptions can be issued without having to visit the patient again. This digitalization also makes everyday work easier for pharmacies – at least that’s the theory. However, Markus Fischer from Hürth knows: The reality is often completely different.
“There are massive problems with the e-prescription. Every pharmacy is like that,” the pharmacist tells EXPRESS.de. “We are all on the verge of nervous stress. Customers are incredibly dissatisfied. They don’t even know what it’s all about if you send them away,” continues Markus Fischer. But what is the problem with the e-prescription?
The process begins with the doctor. There are several options for issuing an e-prescription. This isn’t good for pharmacies at all, as Markus Fischer reveals. If the e-prescription is created using free text, for example, many health insurance companies do not accept this. It continues with those affected, some of whom do not even know what they have been prescribed. What gets really annoying is when the recipe isn’t valid at all…
While prescriptions issued in writing inevitably receive a signature from the doctor, the e-prescription must first be approved. “Many doctors don’t do that straight away,” says Markus Fischer. The result: Patients who go straight to the pharmacy often find themselves with an invalid prescription.
Markus Fischer: “This is a very bad situation for everyone”
Markus Fischer: “This is a very bad situation for everyone. For example, if someone needs an antibiotic but has to wait until the evening because the approval isn’t there yet or the technology doesn’t work. “That’s not possible.” Technology is another hurdle that often fails.
“Be it simply the card reader, the telematics or the connector. Every day something doesn’t work. “Sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for days,” the pharmacist reports that customers sometimes don’t get the medication they need for a long time. At the time of the angry post on Facebook, for example, the telematics infrastructure that enables e-prescriptions to be retrieved was down across Germany.
Together with the delivery bottlenecks, according to Markus Fischer, this makes the work “impossible” and presents pharmacies with an “existential problem” as hardly any income can be generated.
“Several medications are not available at all. “That was already a problem before the e-prescription, but it has become even more serious because you have to stick to the exact instructions in the recipe,” says the Hürther. The portions are precisely defined on the e-prescription and must then be issued accordingly. For example, if the prescription says a pack of 100 tablets, you cannot simply give two packs of 50 tablets. The pharmacy no longer has any leeway.
“Mr. Lauterbach is doing this quietly, with the hope that it will work at some point,” says Markus Fischer, who makes a clear demand: “We urgently need to work on making it transparent for people. Also, the doctor must sign the prescription immediately and people must know about it. A failure technique is also required. You have to be able to read and edit the recipes, even if something doesn’t work technically.”
Markus Fischer ran a pharmacy in Hürth for a long time, together with his sister. Due to a construction site, he moved to Bochum and now works in a pharmacy there. His sister continues to run things in Hürth – and has exactly the same problems there as her brother.
By Gianluca Reucher (gr)