More and more Germans are skipping trips to the doctor and preferring video consultations instead. As the Berlin digital association BITKOM found in a survey of 1,003 people, 18 percent of German citizens have communicated with doctors or therapists in this way at least once via video consultation. That is four percentage points more than in 2021, where it was 14 percent, and almost four times as many as in 2019 (five percent). ( HERE )
“Alternative to a practice visit”
“In certain cases, video consultations are now a real alternative to on-site visits to the practice. Technical access is easy to get via apps or websites; a smartphone, laptop or PC with a camera is enough,” says BITKOM Managing Director Bernhard Rohleder.
Users of the video consultation had predominantly positive experiences (71 percent). It is said that 31 percent rate it as “good”, 40 percent as “fairly good”.
The others were less satisfied: 17 percent rated their experience with the video consultation as “rather bad” and ten percent as “bad”. Overall, eight out of ten users (79 percent) demand that the range of video consultation hours should be expanded. More than two thirds (69 percent) found the treatment in the video consultation to be just as good as in practice. The same number (69 percent) would recommend video consultations with friends and family and more than half (55 percent) now plan to use video consultations whenever possible.
Time limitation is a problem
“The number of chronically ill people continues to increase due to demographic change - meeting the need for treatment will be a major challenge in the future. Video consultations can help maintain medical care, especially outside urban areas,” emphasizes Rohleder.
From BITKOM's perspective, however, it is problematic that video consultation hours in Germany can only be opened temporarily. Doctors are only allowed to bill 30 percent of their consultation hours as online consultations - more will not be reimbursed by the health insurance companies.
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Source: BITKOM
Notes:
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