Successor urgently wanted: Practice for substitution doctors in Bavaria!

Successor urgently wanted: Practice for substitution doctors in Bavaria!

Landsberg am Lech, Deutschland - The doctor's office of Dr. Birgit Angaßmaier support in Landsberg am Lech is in front of that. For five years, the experienced doctor has been looking for a successor for her specialized job in the Substitution therapy to continue. Ablaßmaier support plans to retire in 2026 at the age of 71. Her daughter and medical assistant, Astrid Jana Ziemann, expresses concerns about the poor successor searches and the future care of their patients: inside.

The practice currently looks after 160 opiate -dependent people, including many family fathers and mothers. Dr. Ablaßmaier support has been carrying out substitution therapy since 2006. Ziemann emphasizes that many doctors have a distorted picture of the clientele and appeals to possible successors to share the team's enthusiasm. Your concerns are not unfounded because the lack of substitution doctors are increasingly feared. This development could endanger the availability of important forms of therapy.

Medical deficiency in substitution therapy

In Germany, the number of substituted patients has remained constant in the past ten years. In 2018, around 79,400 patients nationwide took part in drug replacement therapy. But the number of substitution doctors has been falling continuously for years. In 2018 there were only 2585 substitution doctors, which means a decline in 150 doctors compared to 2012. 14 percent of these doctors now look after half of all drug patients. Specialists are often missing, especially in rural areas, which for many patients have to result in long -distance travel routes or outpatient clinics. This shows that there are already "white spots" in the substitution landscape that urgently need to be tackled to secure the supply, such as pharmaceutical newspaper

Another aspect is the 3rd Ordinance on the Amendment of the Narcotics Prescription Ordinance, which came into force in 2017. This regulation transferred certain medical-therapeutic tasks to the Federal Medical Association in order to create more legal certainty in the treatment of opioid dependency. An analysis on the effect of the changes shows that 36.7 percent of the doctors surveyed assess the current and future care of substituted patients as not secured. The result is alarming because there is a high need for information, especially in rural areas, to ensure that patients receive the necessary therapy in good time. This also becomes clear in the study on opioid substitution therapy, which was funded in the context of Federal Ministry of Health