There are now 530 applicants for the additional 100 places financed by the federal government, said chairman Matthias Krenn, who took over from Andreas Huss at the beginning of the year. He wants to continue working on the nationwide uniform overall contract and catalog of services. They would also like to win over the other 530 applicants for the cash register slots, but they don’t know how important the starting bonus of 100,000 euros is to them. This is only available for the 100 places decided by the federal government last year with an urgent need in the subjects of general medicine, pediatrics and gynecology, says Krenn, who is also the FPÖ mayor of Bad Kleinkirchheim and a blue Chamber of Commerce official. Krenn therefore hopes that the federal government will expand the scope of the starting bonuses to a larger group.
Financial equalization: Federal funds “wrongly weighted”
From Krenn’s point of view, the fact that the fund now receives 300 million euros annually for the expansion of outpatient care thanks to the financial equalization must be put into perspective. The departure of the ÖÄK is considerable, with a balance sheet loss of 386 million euros, of which 330 million euros are attributable to the automatic increase in annual payments to the federal states’ hospitals. When it comes to financial equalization, Krenn criticized that the federal funds were “weighted incorrectly”: from this pot the hospitals now receive 600 million euros, but the health insurance companies only receive an additional 300 million euros.
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The costs have also increased recently, due to inflation, but also due to improvements with the contractual partners. The overall contract and the uniform Austria-wide catalog of services with the doctors are still pending. The ÖGK chairman would have liked a time limit from the federal government. “It is possible that more resources will be needed for this,” he also called for a federal funding subsidy. It’s regarding equal benefits for all insured people nationwide, “ultimately the federal government will have to move along.”
“Escalation doesn’t help at all”
There are currently contacts at office level for these contractual issues, and discussions will be held once more with the Federal Curia of Resident Doctors of the Medical Association in the next two months. According to Krenn, he hopes for the interaction between social security, the medical association and the federal legislature: “Escalation doesn’t help at all.”
Work is also underway to expand digital services for patients. In the final expansion, the goal is to record all resident doctors in one app, including the option to book appointments. But this is still a thing of the future, according to the chairman.
