Munich, 18 February 2025 – The National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV) and the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Funds (GKV-SV) have clearly missed the legislative mandate to strengthen telemedicine services with the new regulations in the Federal Coverage Agreement. The continuing quantitative limitation of video consultations and regulatory requirements will lead to the problems in outpatient care being exacerbated rather than solved.

The Managing Director of Teleclinic, Benedikt Luber, takes a correspondingly critical view of the agreement: ‘In the Digital Act, the legislator has instructed the self-government to enable video consultations on a large scale in future. The self-government is ignoring this by continuing to limit the use of telemedicine to 30 per cent of practice time. The fact that the telemedicine offer is geared towards geographical proximity to the respective practice and strict requirements are set for the initial assessment also creates unnecessary access barriers for patients, the entry of new providers into the competition and additional bureaucracy.’ Further restrictions make it more difficult to publicise and advertise telemedicine services.

Overall, this would exacerbate rather than alleviate the problems in outpatient medical care. Up to 11,000 GP practices are likely to remain vacant by 2035. Access to medical care will therefore become even more difficult for many patients, especially in structurally weak regions. Telemedicine could close this gap by enabling fast, location-independent treatment and relieving the burden on both patients and doctors. However, this is only possible if the framework conditions are right. As a pioneer of telemedicine in Germany, TeleClinic has been campaigning for the expansion of digital healthcare services for years and is calling for, among other things, free access to telemedicine regardless of location or regional networks, digital networking of all levels of care with efficient interfaces between telemedicine and inpatient services and the removal of bureaucratic hurdles to improve the integration of telemedicine services into everyday care.

For Luber, the discussion is therefore far from over: ‘If the self-government continues to oppose urgently needed changes, the legislator must ensure that digitalisation finally becomes part of everyday healthcare after the general election, and we will work towards this. With the strong partners we have as a market-leading telemedicine platform, TeleClinic will continue to successfully pursue its growth path, even within the current framework conditions.’

Press contact:
Torben Bonnke
Telephone: +49 171 864 888 1
pr@teleclinic.com

About TeleClinic
TeleClinic GmbH is one of the leading providers of digital healthcare solutions in Germany. Since it was founded in 2015, the company has pursued the vision of making medical services available to everyone, anytime and anywhere – regardless of location, time or other restrictions.