According to experts from the Professional Association of Physicians and Psychological Psychotherapists in Pain and Palliative Medicine in Germany (BVSD), outpatient pain care is problematic and can therefore be expanded and improved. A contractual solution to this has already been worked out by the BVSD, it only requires a legal mandate. However, in the view of the Federal Government, this is not feasible in this form, because „specialised outpatient pain care, or SASV for short, requires transferability to curative individual therapies due to the special palliative objectives geared to individual needs and requirements, which is not the case in this form“, at least this was the Federal Government’s response to a minor question by the FDP parliamentary group on pain care in Germany. According to this question, the SASV is comparable with specialized outpatient palliative care (SAPV). However, palliative therapy does not refer to medical treatment aimed at healing (curative), but rather to alleviating symptoms or reducing other adverse consequences in order to improve the quality of life of the seriously ill patient. Furthermore, palliative therapy is not limited to the last phase of a person’s life, but can also be used in the early stages of causal tumour therapy and must, therefore, be considered in contrast to curative therapy, this is also the opinion of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, which developed the draft contract for the SASV with the BVSD. But also the Associations of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KVen), the health insurance companies as well as the members of the Health Committee of the German Bundestag support the opinion of the BVSD, all of which are also in favour of revised specialised outpatient services. According to this, there are about 3.9 million patients in Germany with severe, severe as well as chronic pain, and also psychological impairments, all of whom receive help from 1,269 outpatient pain therapists.
Source: aerzteblatt.de