General practitioners in Thuringia: Alarming forecasts by 2040!

General practitioners in Thuringia: Alarming forecasts by 2040!

If you are looking for a family doctor in Germany, you could soon face a real challenge. The Central Institute for Statutory Health Insurance Care forecasts an alarming bottleneck in medical care for the coming years. By 2040 it is expected that medical availability in Germany will only reach 74% of today's level. This applies not only to Thuringia, where the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians speaks of 56 general practitioners who are urgently looking for a successor, while only six general practitioners who want to take on a new practice reports the MDR .

Across the country, we are faced with a explosive situation: more and more general practitioners are retiring and the offspring is missing. According to an analysis by the Robert Bosch Foundation, around 11,000 household interfaces will remain vacant by 2035. Regions are particularly affected in Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saxony and Baden-Württemberg reports Deutschlandfunk .

The reasons are diverse: long working hours, high bureaucratic requirements and the desire for a balanced work-life balance draw many young doctors in employment instead of self-employment. In addition, over two thirds of the doctors surveyed complain about the burden of software and programs that make the work more difficult.

measures and counter strategies

In order to counteract the impending shortage of doctors, the federal government plans to introduce the primary medical principle. This system is intended to control access to specialists through a regulation and directly reduce the number of specialist dates required. However, many fear that this means an additional burden for general practitioners: Each family doctor could also have 380 to 2,000 new patient contacts per year, depending on the specific transfer rules. This could put the already burned-out medical profession even more under pressure warns the MDR .

A promising proposal to improve the situation are regional health centers that are intended to provide multi -professional teams. These centers could focus on needs -oriented treatment and prevention to meet the challenges of demographic change. Politics also react: vaccinations and treatments should be strengthened by non -medical health professions and an increase in medical study places.

whether these measures will soon become effective or only a drop on the hot stone will have to be shown. One thing is certain: General medical care in Germany urgently needs to be secured in order to be able to offer all citizens the necessary medical care in the future.